


Thirty

by jaygealousy



Category: Music RPF
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drama, Drug Addiction, Drugs, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Homosexuality, Infidelity, Love, Love Triangle, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Murder, Non Consensual, Psychological Drama, Psychological Trauma, Rape, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con References, Sexual Content, Sexual Violence, Suspense, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-09-29
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:49:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 90,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaygealousy/pseuds/jaygealousy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Goldfish. They live their whole lives in 30-second intervals. Every half minute, their little brain forgets what the last half minute of their life was like. In other words, when this little goldfish is happy, he thinks he's been happy his whole life, since his whole life was only 30 seconds ago. And when this little goldfish is hungry, he thinks he's been hungry his whole life. And when he's dying, this little goldfish thinks he's been dying his whole life.” - Oz</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Goldfish

_**Pt I** _

>   
> 
> 
> _“ **Goldfish**. They live their whole lives in 30-second intervals. Every half minute, their little brain forgets what the last half minute of their life was like. In other words, when this little goldfish is happy, he thinks he's been happy his whole life, since his whole life was only 30 seconds ago. And when this little goldfish is hungry, he thinks he's been hungry his whole life. And when he's dying, this little goldfish thinks he's been dying his whole life.”_  
> 
> 
>   
>  'Animal Farm'.  Oz.  
>  

> 
>   
> 
> 
>   
> 

  


  
_on the highway, thirty people lost their lives_  
_well, I had some words to holler, and my Rosie took a ride_  
_in the moonlight, see the Greyhound rollin' on_  
_flyin' through the crossroads, Rosie ran into the Hound_  


_Roark_

  
_“This is why I've told you, I don't like you on this shit! It turns you fucking psychotic!”_

I can hear glass shattering. They're at it again. With the indifference of any half-asleep slob, I rub and pick the crust out of my eyes—blink several times to read the time on the clock. A quarter to four in the morning.

It's like being inside during a hurricane, hearing rocks smashing against the side of your house while the trees are being uprooted. And that's what Nick does each time; tries to sit down and chat reason with a storm.

_“Will you—”_

_“Fuck you!”_

I know that it's coming, but I flinch when it hits the other side of the wall behind my fucking head. That one sounded like a bottle. Wrapping a pillow across my face, I find myself wishing Chris's aim were heightened as much as his temper after inhaling his coffee pot's worth of different psycho-stimulants. Then at least I could get some sleep.

_“Will you just!—”_

_“Fuck you!”_

And that one sounded like it was still full. Rain, rain, go away.

_“Goddamnit!”_

It almost hurts my throat hearing the hoarse screaming. If it was a record that just hit the wall, that motherfucker better pray it wasn't one of mine.

I tug the pillow down and hug it, sighing the breathy noise one does when woken by domestic violence at three in the morning. The soothing sounds of a chair being dragged across the carpetless floor have finally woken Mick from a beer-coma on his mattress at the other end of the room.

_“Okay, shit, wait a minute—now wait a minute!”_

Mick rises onto his elbows and does a nice, exasperated groan-yawn, making his glee to be up and sleep-deprived with the rest of us known. Katy rolls over next to him, yanking him bare of all the blankets to signal that it's his turn to get up with the children. Like a cranky five-year-old himself, he sighs and curls up in a rather unattractive ball of scrawny bare skin and underwear.

_“Get out of here before I kill you! You motherfucking—”_

Chris's voice is cracking, like a broken pipe that's done whistling out steam and ready to let the waterworks spill. I can't help grinning to myself.

_“You're fucking mental!”_

_“Chris! Beruhige dich!”_

Mark is apparently up and has Mick beat to the job anyway.

_“Just put it down! Tell him to put it down!”_

Whatever 'it' is, Nick sounds scared shitless. I raise my pillow above my head and toss it across the room, hitting Mick square in the head. Goal.

_“Chris, listen to him!”_

_“I'm going to kill him! I'm going to fucking kill him!”_

Mick sits up with the speed of a cat and grace of a dog with a brain tumor. One eye half-open, he throws the pillow back in retaliation, brushing Katy with it and throwing it a few feet left of hitting anywhere near me—taking out the analog clock on the floor with a nice _ring_ instead.

“Get up and do something.” Comes her command, muted from under the blanket, and she shoves him off the mattress with bare feet.

_“Just put it down, you fucking lunatic!”_

“Yeah.” I chime in, half-asleep and full of vigor. “And give me back my pillow.”

Mick drags himself to the door—now the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, moaning some tired concession. He cracks it open in the aptly cautious way of Quasimodo afraid to be seen. And rightly so, since the three of us are just tuning in to an unused vase shattering to pieces on the wall about a foot to the side. The line of light falls right on my face, of course, and I'm blind for a few seconds before Mick throws the door fully open with a leap and the image of Nick the lion-tamer shirtlessly wielding a chair overcomes the glare.

Mark's behind Chris—who's in his boots, leather boxer-briefs and a tangle of belts and buckles—and talking to him some stream of foreign noise in a calm, soothing voice, with his arms raised as if he were at gunpoint. Chris, the drug-rabid offender, is red in the face and wielding a nasty looking piece of scrap metal in a bloodied-from-breaking-glass hand, with wild eyes daring Nick to come near him. The mess of cuts and bruises decorating his body are like camouflage in the environment he's created. That is, all marks except for the lined dashes and gashes cut into the rectangular shape on his upper thigh; the furious scratching out of a word.

“Hey—hey.” Mick pleads with exquisite verbosity, growing smaller as he approaches Chris—hands also non-threateningly positioned up. “Just take it easy.”

Hey, I know you're beside yourself with emotions and mood-altering chemicals to the point of involuntary action and all. And with everyone awake and here witnessing your unsoundness of mind, whatever violent act you commit now would probably even be excusable of culpability in a court case. So, how about you go on and seize back control of yourself, there, and just take it easy?

Shockingly, it only takes something off in the tone of Mick's voice, and everything's a blur. Chris charges forward, Nick thrusts the chair at him, and Mark and Mick tackle him from both sides, slamming together. They knock him to the floor like it's an American football game or some court footage of police brutality. I can hear the glass crunch when he lands on his back. The metal slides away and Nick drops the chair with another bang to pick it up, just for good measure, in case not everyone was already awake yet.

Chris screams a stretch too late after the fall, and then again a stretch too close to Mark adjusting his weight on top of him. The first isn't a response to the pain of being knocked down, but to the frustration of being pinned down. The second is definitely a response to the pain.

The front door opens, connecting loudly with Mark's head, and baffled british-twanged expletives with bitter winter air blow through the crack of space. Yawning, I stretch my arms out like Jesus on the cross and rise from bed to check out the coliseum—see what all the calling is about.

“You fucking neurotic! You fucking _crackpot_! You fucking... loon!” “You fucking neurotic! You fucking crackpot! You fucking... loon!” Nick's whining to no one as he eyeballs the chunk of metal, thrusting it up in the air for the others to see in emphasis of his bitching. At least he's changing up his name-calling vocab.

Neither one of them seems to feel comfortable dropping their guard to explain what they're doing.

I pat Nick on the back, getting a nice close view of the metal, which seems to have become the symbolic, physical manifestation of all the absurd grief he's suffered from Chris's drug use the past week, based on the way he keeps dumbfoundedly holding it out.

“Instrument and substitute weapon. Always the innovator, isn't he, Nicky.” I grin again. It's hard not to.

Chris's attention is violently seized in my direction à la some spooked animal. The writhing multiplies tenfold. Mark is the terrified altar boy. Mick doesn't give a shit about consistency with my internal monologue metaphors and just looks like he's going to have a fucking conniption fit on everyone and everything if Chris breaks free and takes out any of this on him.

“Is there any chance that I can get inside?” Barry, only living here a few days and already a pro at being confronted with these fun situations, pushes the door as far forward as it'll go without breaking Mark's neck. The two 'bedposts' are both turning red trying to restrain Chris's demonic bitchfit. “And would it help if I said I brought food?”

At the mention of food, I quickly leave Nick to himself and the metallic metaphor for his life, and tread barefoot over a sea of broken glass, vinyl and puddles of beer, blood and wine to get to the window.

“Think it's a bit busy on the floor there—they're helping Nick with foreplay.” Shivering in my jeans, I end up ripping the skin on my hand to get the decrepit lock undone. It slides up pretty easy, and I lean out for a breath of frozen, industrial air.

Indeed holding two plastic bags of takeout, Barry rolls his eyes and walks over, leaning into the window until I step away.

“To what do we owe this pleasure?” I gladly take the bags to the table—still minus a chair—while he extends one leg over the threshold and hunches down to climb in.

“'Eat when I'm bored... Insomnia's pretty boring.” He mutters, his facial expression reading 'out to lunch' while he tries to estimate how many bottles and records went in to Chris's masterpiece. Understandably, the sign flips over to 'open for kicking German ass' when the thought of how many records might have been his probably crosses his mind. “Jesus Christ.”

“Actually it was Satan over there...” I'm taking each little oriental carton out and placing it opened to the side on the table, unable to find anything that I wouldn't have to ask questions to know what I'd be eating. I spot something easy—rice—and go on my careful way to get a fork, through the test of hot coals that seems to be a new part of our living space. “Nick still hasn't gotten him a leash.”

“Hey—I said to fucking cut it out with the bitch jokes.” Nick's face turns sober and he points at me with the scrap metal.

Barry lets out some forced laughter, still eyeballing the mess, conceivably pissed off. He's wandered over to Mick and Mark, and he bends down to stare at the ever-squirming Chris, who's now glaring fiercely in my direction.

“ _Let go of me!_ ” Eyes on me, he screams loud enough to tear a vocal chord and wake the neighbors' neighbors, and Mick and Mark do as he says. He scrambles to his feet before either of them have the chance to get off their asses, and he's staring me down over the counter, looking about ready to burst the vein pulsing in his forehead. Actually, he looks as if he's already burst several, with all the glass-shard gashes painting his back and legs red. Maybe Carrie would be the better horror flick analogy.

I've found a fork in the sink that looks halfway eligible for passing a formal health inspection, and I again am working an obstacle course to get back over all the broken shit.

“ _I'm going to fucking kill him!_ ”

Barry, quite civilly, shoves Chris back a step with one palm. Chris's eyes never leave me.

“You need to seriously wind the hell down, mate. Lay off the speed—have a drink; get smashed next time instead of fucking smashing everything.” He's terribly calm and with apparent good intentions, but the two brave wranglers have now gotten to their feet to stand at either side of the unpredictable storm and his death threats.

Nick's moving in, probably all too familiar with the calm before the shit hits the fan, as Barry's getting too close for comfort. Chris lets out a frustrated shriek, looking from me to Barry, framing his face with bended elbows, ready to tear out handfuls of his hair. The lightning strikes. Chris's lunging to throw a plate from the counter at my head. Before anyone else can knock him on his ass or restrain him, Nick runs and grabs him from behind. Chris leaves the ground in his arms, kicking and flailing, even more pissed at who he's being restrained by. His face seems to say the only thing that could make him happy would be drowning Nick in his blood—which isn't looking altogether impossible.

The plate smashes in three pieces on the floor, with a nice and messy shatter and cuts made of hundreds of tiny shards. Headed back to bed with my rice, I walk past and whisper over Nick's shoulder.

“—Woof.”

  
_the scream he made (and my heart) was so high (my heart)_  
_pitched that nobody heard, no one heard that cry,_  
_no one heard (Johnny) the butterfly flapping in his throat_  


_  
_ _Nick_

  
It takes all my strength to drag him into our room. I slam the door behind us as soon as I drop him. I can barely recognize him when he's fucked up like this. It feels like he's been swapped with an identical stranger, and it's making every aspect of my life, down to breathing, an exhausting task. He's so drunk, he falls to his knees trying to take a swing at me. We've both had too much and I tell him so. I can't begin to comprehend all the sensitive issues and the extent of how enraged it all makes me. With what he's done to me, how he's betrayed me. It'd be like trying to untangle a thousand twisted and knotted veins in my own goddamn arm. 

“ _What the hell is wrong with you?!_ ”

“Fuck you!” He's become emotionally attached to the idea that he's ' _not that drunk_ ', and anything said to the contrary is just a spiteful remark to shit on his feelings. He's not keen on being locked in here with me, so he makes for the door again. I follow to block him from running out, but he picks up a broken piece of bottle and thrusts it in my direction. It happens in such an unreal way that it's a blurred image I can't process, in both the short amount of time that elapses and the dreamlike nature of having someone behave so bizarrely and violently out of their character.

He swings at me again and, in reflex, I reach out and manage to grab a fistful of hair from the back of his head as the glass digs into the side of my arm. Moving on pure instinct, I use all my force and the added weight of the sensitive restraint I have on him to swing him back in the direction of the bed. Some of his hair rips out in my hand and his head goes flying into the bedpost. I regret it as soon as I hear the clang of his skull hitting the frame.

He doubles over, dropping the piece of bottle to hold onto the back of his head. I shove him so he falls onto the mattress. 

We're both smeared in blood, either from getting flying glass-debris thrown our way or being knocked to the ground on all the broken pieces, but running liquor has smoothed the sting on all the rough edges. This is what's become of our relationship—our friendship. This is the only way I know to keep him from trying to kill me. He hates me for the next few hours at least, and if I don't draw more blood first, he will. Any time I try to pull back, to walk away from this ridiculousness, he provokes me back to the same old shit. In whatever way he can, he harasses me until he finds a reaction he wants. Spite. Aggression. Brutality. I'm all too familiar with the fear and intimidation he inspires in others, but it falls short of working on me when he's not armed or threatening my life. He has such a tough front, but I can't see him as this image he puts out anymore. Once you've fucked someone, things like that change.

I've crawled onto the bed on top of him and I feel dizzy and warm in the face. Between the drugs, the booze, and the lost weight he never had on him to lose in the first place, it's not hard restraining him anymore. For some reason, when it's just me holding him down, it stuns him into passivity probably as good as any taser gun or tranquilizer could. I'm grabbing two more fist-fulls of his hair—something that used to be done only in intimacy between us—and I keep tugging and pulling to make him look up at me as I force my face down into his.

“Was he good?” I'm screaming now and I've gone beyond the point of upsetting him. He's been rapid-cycling through his two new personalities—one hellbent on antagonizing and agitating me as much as humanly possible, and the other completely passive and clueless victim to whatever violence it can provoke. 

“ _Get off of me!_ ” He screams at the top of his goddamn lungs. The threat that was in his voice before has been replaced with panic.

I hear three booming knocks from the other side of the wall—a message to be quiet.

“ _Was he better than me?_ Huh?” I think my vision is leaving. The anger is blinding; debilitating. I don't know why at this point, but I moan sarcastically into his ear. I want finally to torment him as much as he's tormented me. 

He's gone into fight-or-flight mode and he actually bites me and grinds my bottom lip between his teeth. In retrospect, arms-otherwise-engaged and face-presented isn't the smartest way to confront him right now. I yelp the usual expletives, grabbing his throat with both hands. At first, it's to get him to let go, but then I'm squeezing his neck like I'm wringing a damp towel—trying to get every drop of water out; every drop of arrogance. The breathless scream is out of character, more frightened than the past couple days, but nothing but white hot rage will register in my mind. I'm thrusting against his thighs mockingly, grinding through the fabric of our clothes, over and over, and the room spins around me like I'm two-dimensional in the center of a three-dimensional hurricane. He goes into overdrive in response—kicking and flailing in a frenzy I've never seen before. Knees, feet, and elbows connect with various parts of my body, decorating me in what will be a shower of bruises. He fights to choke me back until the burst of energy dies down. Then he fights to pry my hands away. Then his arms go limp.

I let go. Of his throat. Of every inhibition. The dam breaks open. The flood crashes loose. And like usual, he gets his way. My whole fucking body burns, with loathing, with lust. Our mouths are fighting the same battle wordless; I'm trying to get an affectionate response, and he's chewing me out—chewing on me, whatever. My hands go down his waistband.

“Get off of me! _Get off of me!_ ” What I thought was screaming at the top of his lungs before was apparently just a vocal warm up. His anger has changed to urgency. If you were listening outside the window, you'd think I was the one trying to kill him. Once more, with the last of the oxygen in him, he attempts to death-roll his way out from under me. I hold firm; no dice. The blood has left his face. He's no longer scrambling to attack me. Instead, it's to get away from me.

Everything about this has become feral. It's violence and nothing more. It makes me sick that I don't care. It's all so fucking hate-filled, I don't know how much longer I can cope. He's pushing away from me one second and then he's pushing into me. I don't know if I should duck for cover or drop my pants. He stares at me; open mouthed, breathing fast, eyes narrowed in what I think could be the same combination of arousal and anger as mine. There's _something_ animal in his eyes. I guess I already know what's coming, but I go to touch his chest anyway—I can't help it—and he swings a fist at me and actually growls in frustration. 

“ _Shit!_ ” Hit full force by his bony knuckles, the cartilage in my ear throbs and rings, and I think I can feel it swelling and turning red. I grab both of his arms and fall forward onto the bed, using my weight to keep him pinned down. 

“ _Don't fucking touch me! I hate you!_ I fucking hate all of this!” He howls, choking back tears, probably as much delirious as he is speaking truthfully. I try to convince myself that this isn't him talking, but I'm at my breaking point. I really want to walk away and not come back. He's writhing around on his back to get away from everything he just tortured me into, twisting his torso and hissing more foreign words. I let his arms go free to force my hand over his mouth, while, just to fuck with me, he starts smacking the side of my head where he hit me. 

Yelling into my palm, he claws at my arm, digging up my skin under his stubbed finger nails and leaving raw red behind while he tries to pull my hand off his face. I can just make out the words _'get off of me'_. He bites me; I can't tell if the wet heat I feel is from my broken skin or his saliva, but I hold tight, clutching his whole jaw, drawing trace amounts of blood where my fingers press into his skin. 

He lets my palm go free, so I let go of his mouth—pin his arms to the mattress yet again instead. I can feel him starting to tremble, probably exhausted from twisting to get away, and I wish I could let my guard down and catch my breath with him. I wish I could check to see whether my hand is full of spit or blood. 

“ _Calm down!_ ” 

“I don't want to fuck you, _you asshole!_ ” He snarls. I'm enraged at the thought that he might actually be so drunk that he thinks this is about me trying to get into his pants, but the more likely truth—that he's trying to rip my heart out and boss me around, dominate me, at the same time—feels worse. 

“Go fuck yourself then, y' _cunt_. I'm perfectly aware!” I'm not giving into this shit and I laugh in his face. I've hit a nerve, big time, and he's now visibly losing both the battles to keep his emotions under wraps and to escape out from under me. He keeps struggling, squirming admirably on until his body gives out again, and again, and the thrashing fades to otherwise motionless gasping for air under a film of cold sweat. “I said, was he good?!” 

He's shaking. He bites his lip and refuses to look at me.

A week ago, we'd _never_ fought like this. 

“ _Leave me alone!_ ” There are another five bangs on the wall, more fast-paced and aggressive this time. The idea of getting away from him is tempting at this point, but I don't want to give him the satisfaction, and I don't know if I could get off him now if I wanted to. My ego won't let me. 

“Or is this it? You found somebody more of a _bitch_ than _you are?_ ” I'm going right for all the things you know you should never say to someone you love—someone whose insecurities you know as well as your own. The sick pang of jealousy in the pit of my gut makes me think I'm content to keep on trying to get a rise out of him at the cost of what might end up as serious injuries, as long as he wants to keep up all of his shit. As long as he wants to fucking threaten my life. To betray my trust. To slowly kill himself.

The sickness gets worse when the hurtful remark turns on me. Degrading him, I'm degrading what we've had together. He whines, drawing it out until it turns into a high-pitched growl, trying with all his force to get an arm free to punch me, until his vocal chords give out as well. With one hurtful, hateful, stupid remark, I've ripped every intimate experience between us right in half. Now I'm holding it up in front of his face and trying to get him to look. Something that was an act of trust and love—so personal and cherished to us, so exclusive, it's essentially been a secret—I've just defiled it with a temper tantrum. I lean back so I can see him. His eyes are bloodshot. Tears are streaming horizontally down the sides of his face. He looks pale, hysterical, and deranged. Like he actually thinks I'll hurt him. Like I could ever hurt him any worse than he's hurt me.

“ _Es ist nicht meine Sch— ...Get off._ ” He can't yell anymore. He's hoarse, repeating himself, already begging without the word 'please'; the desperate sound of defeat. I can feel my whole central nervous system surge in a sweeping wave up my spinal column. Is it triumph? Or regret? The thrill is dead, anyway. 

His body goes completely limp—just breathing open-mouthed, lying still with a look of absolute madness in every respect while the crocodile tears pour.

Not reacting, not coming back at me with something just as awful, just lying there and accepting what I've said—this is way fucking worse than the threats to kill me.

“Say 'please'.” This is getting repetitive, and maybe it's partly my fault. I can tell I've made the worst even worse because I can feel his chest rising and falling faster. If there was any excitement to be had in this at all, it's dulled into annoyance and remorse. I'm annoyed with him, with myself, and I don't fucking want to be. I don't need any more grief; I don't need to be any more upset with myself than I already am with him. “You're acting like I need to take you to the fucking psych ward.” 

There's silence, at least except for the sound of our breathing and his sobs. The loud rustle of the sheets died with the struggle. There's something way too genuine in the fright and the panic and the crying. I know I'm drunk. I know I've taken it too far. I'm pinning down the person I love—screaming in his face, choking him, shoving my hand over his mouth. He's hitting me, throwing glass at me, threatening to kill me. We're both fucking bleeding. Both crying and on the verge of crying. 

With his eyes shut, he takes a deep breath in, then lets it out in the most helpless, exasperated sigh I've ever heard. 

“ _Please._ ” 

Like he's officially accepting everything I've said to him. 

Like it's something he feels he already knew. 

I can barely believe it, but I move up, face to face with him, and stop. I let his arms go free and prop myself onto my elbows, stationary. I've humiliated him—although hardly as much as he's done to me—and he won't open his eyes to look at me. I've turned his dramatic act on its head. His bullshit this entire week. I'd take a shot at him right now if I didn't know it'd be what he wanted. And that just makes it all the more upsetting. He's the one afraid of me now, and it doesn't feel good. It upsets me more. 

How _the fuck_ do _I_ feel bad? 

I'd rather he get mad and try to stab me. This is like I've just broken his goddamn spirit or something. Drawing strength and whatever patience I can from one massive breath in, I stare him straight in the face, waiting for his eyes to open. I want him to look me in the fucking eyes. But too much time passes. He's genuinely scared. He's restraining himself from sobbing—tears rolling, spasmodic, and breathing involuntarily—hoping I'll go away. 

The fact remains, my ego-defensive mechanism just told him I reduce him not just to being _a bitch_ or _my bitch_ , but to _the_ example of perverse, submissive weakness. What have been the intimate dynamics of our relationship, I've deemed something pathological and defective about him. This has been a constant source of grief from outside eyes looking in; what made us immune was that we understood our relationship for what it was. And that's all that's matterd. And now I've just called the physical act of love between us an act of debasement and humiliation at his expense—adding insult to injury with the insinuation that this depraved treatment is something only he enjoys. 

I don't know if there's a crueler force of objectification than the loose lips of a drunk and angry lover. 

This time without bared teeth or blood, my mouth meets his. It's a dry peck, and then another, and another, until he returns the kiss—distraught, maybe apologetic. Like I've just taken off some Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Jackass mask and he's relieved it's still really me. I'm sick with myself that I upset him this much. I _wanted_ to upset him this much. Our mouths open and close against each other in what would be their normal rotation, if not for everything else. It tastes like vomit and alcohol, and there's more than reservation on his part, but it progresses into deep, lunging kisses, while his defenses break down to bawling without restraint, harder and harder, until he's hyperventilating and physically can't continue. 

Unconsciously, my arm slips beneath his back to hold him to me. I'm gulping in air, pressing my forehead to his, brushing our noses, our lips. He throws his head to the side, away from me, trying to hold his breath and tears with the hand over his mouth, while his body forces both against his will in shuddering bursts. 

“I'm sorry.” I whisper, dropping down to hug him and press our bodies together. He can barely choke out a few syllables. I repeat it, almost as an explanation. Being together like this is familiar and perfect; it makes me euphoric—against my will. There's _nothing_ depraved about it. I love him. 

I kiss his cheek, brush my lips against him, moving down to kiss the corner of his mouth. My hands have got minds of their own, and pretty soon my fingers are down the waistband of his shorts, but he starts shaking his head. 

“Fuck you.” The words come out riding the same wave of sobs I'm apparently trying to forget that I stirred up. I freeze. I feel disgusted with myself, enraged with him, all over again. There's no fucking scenario in which this is going to go down where I walk away as the bad person.

“I said I'm _sorry._ ” I wrap my arms around his ribs, which have too little skin and too much bone. He tries to push me away, to get up. I hold on tight and press my face against his chest, forcing his arms around me.

“Just _stop._ ” He shoves my head away. I lean over to look at him face-to-face, but he turns to one side or the other like a child no matter how many times I try.

“I didn't mean it. You fucking _know_ I didn't mean any of it.”

“ _Get away from me!_ ”

“Just tell me what's—fucking, tell me _why_. God _damn it!_ ” The pain, his manipulation—it's all gnawing at my brain and the back of my eyes like a headache with a grudge. My emotions flare and I hit his face with some sickly restrained violence that ends up somewhere between a slap and a punch. “Why do I _always_ feel like there's something huge going on with you and you never fucking tell me _anything!_ ”

Now he's got a straw of hatred to latch on to in order to keep himself from crying, and I'm shocked at myself. As soon as I've hit him, my hand is reaching to comb back his hair like it didn't happen.

I can't deal with this shit.

“Please... Tell me what's wrong. Tell me—let me fix it. Let me try at least!”

“This is what I _hate_! Always! You need to fix everything! I am not a thing that you can _fix me_.”

“If there's something wrong, I wanna know what the fuck it is!”

“I said you can't _fucking fix me!_ ”

“What the fuck _do you want from me?!_ ”

When I hear knocking audible enough to be in the room, I feel so startled and embarrassed, there's a burst of anxiety in which I practically puke up my racing heart and the attached network of veins.

“Trouble in paradise?” Roark is standing in the doorway, a hand on the frame, comically holding the doorknob and staring in. I can almost see Chris's blood go cold. He starts howling all the best four-letter words and kicking to get out from under me.

I sit up and let him go and it feels like someone's taken the ground out from under me. He grabs our blanket, still sobbing, and wraps it around himself and storms out of the room, aggressively bumping shoulders with Roark and practically knocking him over onto his ass. And I'm left with nothing but a lot of bloodstains and loose glass. I'm shouting after him, enraged, humiliated, and deeply fucking depressed.

_dig deep in your heart for that little red glow_  
we're decomposing as we go  
everything you can think of is true  
and fishes make wishes on you  
we're fighting our way up dreamland's spine  
red flamingos and expensive wine 

  
Miseries aren't created equal. It sounds like an unspoken, universal truth that's obvious to the point that it's not even worth mentioning, but the thought itself is profound to me in the moment. A light has been turned on that I never even knew existed, and as if my eyes were adjusting to the glare, I can't look directly at the dust of crushed bottles and plates that's blanketed the floor. It's the ash-rain from regrets kept in so long they boiled and soured into something unidentifiable.

Chris's in a half-naked, blacked-out heap at the foot of the couch, where Gail is sleeping under our blanket. That's the only way he's gotten to sleep in the past couple of weeks—drinking. I just don't know where he found any bottles leftover. His knees are skinned raw and shine with blood and pus. Half the dark, knotted splotches of black and blue painting his skin I can't even identify what drunk nights of grief or fighting they're from. Keeping my eyes from the flaring, cancerous rays of enlightenment the game of 'guess which argument it's from' gives off, I'm staring blankly at his back. Cuts as though someone put him through a paper-shredder cover his skin, like the patterns in an animal's fur. It's the only amass of injury I know exactly how it happened and that I didn't directly inflict it on him.

One of the bedroom doors creaks open. I keep replaying the image of him hysterically threatening me with a chunk of metal and getting mauled onto the floor. Good, my mind says. I still hear his howl from when gravity and the weight of two men laid his back flat on the broken glass. You made your bed, now lie in it, my mind says. But it won't say why I keep trying to swallow the same burning lump in my throat, or why I can't make my eyes budge to look over any other part of a naked body I've seen and touched every inch of.

“You know when Roark told you he could make a guy's head explode by looking at him, he was being flippant. Don't think it's a talent you can actually pick up from practice.” Somewhere in the kitchen opening and shutting cabinets behind me, Mick's walked out of his room without me even noticing. There's a uneasiness about the sound of his voice and manner, to which this good-humor mood doesn't participate.

Jumping at the excuse to look at and think about anything other than Chris, I suddenly remember where I am and what I'm doing there and spin around on my stool to face the counter. There's an open carton of beef and broccoli in front of me that's since gone from refrigerator cold to room-temperature cold.

“Do we still have a vacuum?” I pick up my fork, more interested in moving my food around casually than eating it.

Like a convict out on community service, Mick's wearing an orange t-shirt and glumly throwing handfuls of garbage and glass from the floor into a trashbag.

“We never had a vacuum.” He smiles sarcastically, his arms disappearing as he empties two fists of trash and broken shards in the black plastic tent. I drop my fork into the carton and depressively rest my head in my hands. Fighting with whatever the fuck is making my chest so tight and my mind so numb, I feel like I get pushed back as often as a gain an inch. I should probably be doing what Mick is, and I consider telling him I'll clean up instead, but 'never had a vacuum' is ringing discouragingly in my ears.

Walking barefoot and soaked out from the bathroom, Roark sits down in a towel on the stool next to me.

“You got a lot of good vocabulary into that one, last night. I think you may have had him convinced at 'fucking fuck you, you fucking whore'. I know I was deeply swayed.” Roark snarks, putting his hand to his chest as though to vouch this suggestion from the heart. I should expect it by now, but it's inflammatory to hear all the same. He steals a forkful of my breakfast, then decides to slide the whole carton over in front of him when I don't react.

Too disinterested or distracted to get pissed, I grab a placemat from the counter's array of junk and dully toss it at his face—my one arm never leaving the support of my head, and my gaze never leaving its blank contact with the unknown grime-stain on the fridge door.

Roark throws the mat over the counter and into the kitchen and resumes eating. Mick stops all he's doing, with hands of glass still in the air, just to look at him with a thank-filled expression of 'wow, more shit on the ground for me to throw away'. There's a passive-aggressive silence filled with chewing noises and invisible tension, as Mick doesn't budge or let the staring contest go, and Roark stuffs his face, purposefully oblivious.

“Like you told me, Mick. You can't make it happen by looking at him.” I sigh when I say this, and it sounds moody and snide. It's unpleasant to my ears even. My arms drop and fold on the counter and I look around for something else to stare lifelessly at.

“You know, the only way I can think of that you two could possibly be more useless right now is if you were actually the shit on the floor waiting to be thrown in the garbage. But, it could be argued that then you'd at least have served a purpose at some point in your lives—specifically, as objects for a jackass to hurl at another jackass—and you would at least then also serve a future use in being shit for me to bitterly shove in plastic. In which case, there would truly be nothing more useless in this existence that I could possibly dream up than the two of you.” His eyes never leaving us, Mick lets a few seconds of disdainful staring pass by before he dumps the glass and dirt into the bag; a figurative fuck-you.

In his crouched stance, he swivels around, looking away from Roark to stare up at me accusingly. Without watching, he digs up more ugly, jagged bits, dirt, and hair from the floor with his hands.

“And as for the jackass asininity last night—I didn't say anything when you started whatever it is you call what you're doing. I _haven't_ said anything since his... sex-screams have become my new alarm clock. I might add, my silence remained out of respect—for _him_ , not you, since he actually pays for most of the shit he breaks—and this is all in spite of pressure that's been put on me _to_ say something. But this.” He's practically pointing at me with the way his brows furrow into an angry arrow over his eyes. He gestures the handful of garbage out towards me, showcasing all he puts up with. “This is getting ridiculous.”

“If _that's_ what gives you a free pass to be a complete dick in Mick's book, I wish I bartended.” Roark guffaws through a mouthful of food, apparently immune to his inclusion in the most useless persons in the universe awards ceremony.

“I don't need to be getting up at all hours of the morning like a goddamn policeman on call to break up domestic disputes. And yet there I am, at four in the fucking morning! And then I can't get back to fucking sleep because you two are either screaming about fucking eachother or screaming about fucking fixing eachother.” As though he started this lecture with some sense of calm and patience, he concludes by violently throwing another handful into the rather sadly deflated bag, missing the opening and covering one of the draw strings in glass.

“The vocabulary in this family!”

I hear the words but I'm not really listening. My brain keeps itching with the thought that all his complaining will wake up Chris and this will start all over again.

“Do you two write down every conversation I have or something?”

“No, that's Barry's job. He pulled the short straw.” Picking now at the bottom of the carton for any remaining crumbs or gravy, Roark is eternally amused and eternally irritating.

“You say that like I actually know whether I want to fuck him or knock the shit out of him with a bible half the time, Mick. I don't know what the hell to do with him!”

As quick as I can say 'fuck him', the fork drops and Roark's fingers are dramatically shoved into his ears. The mantra of _oh god la la la I can't hear you_ begins.

“Speaking of which, he was doing lines of something off one of your bibles yesterday.” There is a tinge of disgust in Mick's voice, oddly more present than when he had to actually name outloud what everyone in this place likes to pretend doesn't happen behind my closed bedroom door.

“That's the problem, he—”

“Yeah, in the middle of the kitchen, on the floor. I don't know what the hell he said, but he yelled at me because I wanted to use the room for making food.” Departing from his tauntingly jovial mood, Roark says this like something that's been pissing him off for years he's just telling to another human being for the first time.

“Okay, I fucking know, I saw. Obviously when you two come to talk to me about keeping law and order, there's a problem. I'm thinking of calling an exorcist, already.”

Roark scowls and rolls his eyes. With a weak slap, he knocks the fork and empty food carton over the counter and onto the floor in front of Mick.

“Get one with a white lab coat. And get him a muzzle.”

“Roark, If that's another bitch joke, I swear to god I will sic him on you.”

Looking like he's choosing between two options, of either spontaneously combusting from carrying a boulder of suppressed anger or ignoring Roark, Mick bears his teeth and whacks the food carton across the kitchen floor and into the hall. “You don't need an exorcist, you need to help him fucking detox.”

Unaffected, still fucking amused, Roark stands up, reaches his arms in the air in a yawn, and strolls down the hall past the food carton. He casually drops his towel a few feet away, as if putting the cherry on top of the disaster sundae.

“Yeah.” There's an annoying twitch in my eye every few half minutes, and I can feel a vein in my forehead pulsing. I cling to a few moments of silence, shutting my eyes and holding on—some skeptic equivalent to praying to God for patience. “No shit. It's _drug user slang_ , okay?”

Mick stops shoveling shit for a second to look up at me, half smartassing and half questioning himself.

“...No it's not.”

“Yes it is.” I say this dismissively, getting up off my ass—trying to decide whether to turn around and torture myself with a closer view of all Chris's injuries or go back to bed.

“I've been around you lot forever and I've never heard of anyone 'calling the exorcist'.” It might be funny how determined he is to not have his innocent ignorance snidely taken advantage of, if I were in any sort of mood to laugh at anything.

“That's because none of us have ever DT'd. See? It even sounds like slang.”

 _“Don't confuse the boy!”_ Comes Roark's jaunty shout from another room.

“I'm older than you.”

_“That was drug user slang, too, Mick.”_


	2. Music

_ **Part II** _   


> _“One good thing about **music** , when it hits, you feel no pain – so hit me with music.”_  
> 
> 
>   
>  Bob Marley  
>  

> 
>   
> 

__ a lovestruck romeo sings the streets a serenade  
laying everybody low with a love song that he made  
finds a streetlight, steps out of the shade  
says something like, “You and me, babe. How about it?” 

  
_Nick_  
I hate watching him have nightmares. It'd be easiest to resort to cliches and say it bothers me because I hate seeing him hurting, but the truth never seems to be the same as the words, the same as seeing a map isn't the same as seeing the area, I guess. Really, I hate not knowing why he's hurting—or, not being able to change it. I hate it because I hate feeling powerless. I wouldn't admit it to him, but it's selfish. And I can sympathize with the fact that he won't come to me with how he's feeling because he expects me to react like it's an ailment I need to diagnose and fix, which I'd get frustrated if I couldn't. And he'd be right.

He's moaning every few seconds in the throes of whatever bad dream. It's a familiar sound—this androgynous trill from the back of his throat every time he exhales—but the spirit behind it's all wrong. It's troubled. Sad. The only comparison I can think up is hearing a childhood song, stuck together with all the safe, warm nostalgia and all the connected memories, but played broken and out of tune. A lullaby your mom used to sing you, played at her funeral. It makes my eyes water and my breath short and tight.

His face is all lined and tense. I'm combing the hair back from his eyes—tucking it past his ears, brushing it to the back of his scalp. Whatever's bothering him, it's locked away in his head. Part of me wants to wake him up and make it go away, but it's my way of some silent apology to let the realities stay a dream for a while longer. It's a secretive, anonymous act of kindness he'll know nothing about when he wakes up, and that's maybe the closest I'll get to being selfless today.

He hurt me. I'm still pissed off at him. But wrapping my arms around him now is for my own sake. I pull the blankets tighter over us. My knees press further into the backs of his. We're huddled together, overlapping each other for warmth—consciously or not. It's too cold to go back to sleep. I can't just lay awake here, either, if I know he's passed out half-naked on the floor in the next room sporting an abstract-expressionist mosaic in his back. So here we are.

My fingers are turning purple from the draft. I don't know why I feel guilty for what Mick and Mark did to him. It's coupled with anger, but the feeling's so strong, part of me doesn't think I deserve to be comfortable. This deep, ugly sadness presses into my chest. I don't feel like I even deserve his loyalty. 

A line from Moby Dick runs vaguely through my head—something Ishmael said about the true enjoyment of a bed's warmth being found only in a cold room, even while he was bunking with the cannibal. _For there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast._

It's unfair for him, though. The only unconditional bliss we have, where fact and fiction reverse—where our surreal, larger-than-life idealisms get to take the place of all the monotonous and loathsome truths, where contrast isn't needed—just ended up a nightmare tonight. Just an exhausting mirror of waking life that ends with the start of a hangover.

I keep thinking, _good—you made your bed, now lie in it._ But something about that doesn't make any sense at this point. The retribution game; the ego-tripping. We both laid in the bed, have both been laying in the same bed, in the same mess. When does the time come to wake the fuck up and straighten life out instead of sitting around in the bullshit, growing sores? My mind keeps replaying scattered scenes from last night. I see the torn skin on his face, the bruises outlining my fingertips from when I held his mouth shut, and I want to crawl under a rock and fucking cease existing. But I don't wanna lay down in a mess and just let all my fuck-ups be.

Is it really such a huge shock he's sleeping with someone else? I don't know what he sees in me—or saw—that's made him love me. And that wonder is not self-pity-party bullshit. It's not grief for insecurities that only exist in my head— _you're so wonderful, why do you want to be with an ugly, miserable, worthless, man-shaped piece of shit like me?_ I know it's not, because I've had my fair share of that crap, plus second-helpings. This is guilt for my actions. It's concrete; not abstract. Things that I've done and said that have impacted him. Times when my emotions and my appetites took the wheel and I squandered consideration for others and decency and human goodness in general. All in exchange for some escape route for the stock-piled bullshit I never saddle up and deal with.

It's not that I've hurt him. It's that I've damaged him. Only one of those can be wiped clean by forgiving somebody.

My chest is stuck to his back now. His body's damp with sweat, watering down the dried blood into a brownish, runny red on the white shirt I put on him.

I just can't think of the reasons anymore why I should be the comfortable one.

_Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian._

I'm resting my head on the back of his neck, flattening my nose sideways on his skin while I breathe him in. Whatever comfort I'd get from this is turning to uneasiness the stronger the scent of his blood gets. The overwhelmingly selfish part of me wants my eyes shut and my memory sequestered off to days and nights where the only bruises we'd leave on each other came from unified ecstasies. Whether he kissed black and blue onto my neck or marked up my back holding on for life while we rose and fell together with each other's heartbeats, or if I mouthed affectionate bruises into the skin of his thighs or pierced a vein to share some mainlined bliss.

I don't want to think about any of this. It only makes me see him with someone else—and then comes the question, why the fuck not? He's turned into my NA sponsor instead of my partner. Sex with me has becomemundane, charitable bed-side manner. An appeasement to the begrudging surge in libido from my body's craving of any access to the endorphins it's accustomed to. What am I doing to make him happy? And I do just want him to wake up happy again. But hard as I try to replace everything with fond thoughts, the present—the _now_ —is hiding in every sensation. What he did was wrong. It was vicious, vile, and low. Fucking tormenting. But I screwed it up to begin with. I've screwed him up. Granted, you can't blame the entire tragedy of one person on the influence of another. He has to own up to what he did to me, and to what he's done to himself, or even said yes to. But I've caused a goddamn trainwreck in his life. The consequences of me have made him sick.

I should at least feel relief that he's getting rest. It's miraculous. He doesn't sleep anymore. But I guess he never used to, either. He'd go days at a time, even without drugs—but it was always for some end. It was to _do something_. Because he wanted so much, it couldn't all fit into daylight. Because four in the morning was when inspiration struck.

Now, he stays awake to lie in bed.

This isn't him anymore. I can feel his hair fall on my forehead and over my eyes each time I brush it back, and all I can think is: he hasn't been cutting it up. There's a small, scabbed patch of skin from where I pulled some out last night, but otherwise, it's normalcy seems abnormal. He hasn't been taking care of himself, or whatever he calls taking care of himself, at all. It ties in with everything but I don't fully understand how.

I don't know when or why he stopped acting like himself. Everything adds to the general notion that he's changed; that we haven't just grown apart—that something's wrong. I want to keep myself blind and content, to wallow in self-pity that he doesn't love me anymore, to simplify matters so I can feel the pain, forget about it, and move on. But reality is behind and inside of every memory and the memories all inform my reality. As much as my emotions tell me otherwise, I know on some level this isn't just about me. This isn't going to turn into the quick, clean, and painful break-up I had with Anita. It's going to stay the long, messy, and torturous relationship it is for a while yet.

Even after what he did, we're too much alike for me to doubt that he still loves me. And now, here comes that dumb question from that dumb, depressive little fucker climbing around in my brain: _why?_

Any pleasant thought I try and focus on seems to get overshadowed by a particular visualization of his ribcage from last night. For whatever reason, it's nagging at me. In my head, I can see the bone under translucent skin and the word _'fragile'_ keeps sticking in my mouth, coming back every time he makes some noise in his sleep. He probably fucking weighs as much as Anita right now. Nobody else sees the vulnerability in him the way I do, and I fucking hate that it gives me the obligation to be the one to do something. 

I get a flash of him on his back, messing the bed with blood, pus, and loose pieces of glass, yelling into my palm while he tries to push me off of him—biting the shit out of my hand. It rises up in my throat like bile: _fragile._

My arm's fallen asleep. I reach under the soon-to-be-red shirt to feel for the bones sticking out. And there they are, sharp and pronounced, with hardly anything padding the stone-hard angles from the surface of his skin. He stirs and mumbles something, and I hope that of all the dumb things I could wake him up with, it's not gonna be my cold hands.

If he were inside my head, if I repeated any of this to him, I know he'd say I'm forever self-absorbed. That, after all this between us, I'm still slave to the social-conditioning I was brought up with. That I succumb to juvenile taunts. That I need retain 'masculinity' by associating maleness with dominance and power, by making things between us role specific—by reducing whatever neutrality and freedom he has to crude associations with 'femininity'. Because it's always been partially true. In reality, he's always been indomitable and more courageous than me in that 'femininity', and I always let myself gloss over and cheapen that one way or another. He'd say that what is really just human behavior, I see as something wrong with him—that nobody else sees this fragility in him that I do.

I want to agree that this is all in my head—that I'm the dim one, always in an exhausting wrestle to keep the gears of my mind turning, generating, and working to keep the light on and broad; to avoid the dim and narrow. But as much as I want to, and as much as I realize it's instinctive for me to make this about myself, I feel his gaunt body and I see last night and I can't accept that what's happening with him is some projection of my ego.

A haunting doubt hangs in my head along with the two syllables, _'fragile':_ am I deflecting by making my troubles into someone else's shortcomings, or is he? The question's too big and has too much weight for me to concede to his answers, or what I guess his answers would be, or to concede to my paranoia—that my faults are projecting a submissive image onto him that's not real. It holds too much impact on my worries for him, for his health, for what's going on with him to dismiss what I feel and see.

He starts to turn over but twists to his original position when the big bruise that is his back falls under his weight. I can't imagine how drunk he was to have laid on it with me on top of him last night—how drunk we both were. 'Mutilated' almost takes over as my new mantra, but then I remember the silence and the bleak resignation when he gave in and asked _'please.'_ And there's the rotten thing I devoured, back again: _fragile._

He actually said _'please.'_ What the fuck was that?

His noises have stopped. For a moment, I don't know if my mind is playing tricks on me, but I come back from doubting and self-diagnosing insanity, and I just figure he's either waking up or having a more pleasant dream. The question isn't left open for long. He stretches out his legs, escaping our huddled fetal position. I stop combing back his hair.

We listen to each other breathe for what's probably only a few seconds but feels longer. He doesn't try to shun me or throw my hands off him, so I push my fingers up through the back of his scalp and let his hair fall into the usual bunched up mess. He sniffs—probably dislodging some drug that's crusted from his nasal cavity to the back of his throat. Then he stirs a bit, moving as much weight as he can off of his back. I resume brushing the mess back to 'normal.'

“ _...lass mich alleine...bitte nicht..._ ” He's incoherent and barely audible to me, so I only catch a few words—even fewer of which are familiar in any helpful way. Reflexively, if not nervously, I stop touching him. Still recovering from the vulnerable state of sleep, he rubs the dreams from his eyes with one hand and remembers the language barrier between us. “I'm soaked.”

It's a statement, but it's plain he's looking for answers.

“You kept, um, mumbling. You were dreaming... Nightmare, I guess.” All nerves, I'm whispering into the back of his neck and the warmth of my breath bounces back at me off his skin. There's an explanation in there somewhere. I've failed to verbalize it, but I trust he'll figure it out: _you've had a bad dream and have now woken in a cold sweat._ I press my lips to a well-familiar sensitive spot behind his ear, almost begging or making a wish I couldn't put into words if I tried. His ear is ice cold. I'm close enough that I can feel him swallow. It's not difficult to imagine he's dehydrated—from drinking and from pouring sweat. I should probably get up and get him a glass of water or something.

He stirs again, positioning himself as far off his back as he can without lying face-down or having me completely gone from his field of vision. I can see his face now and I get to relive once more how he got my fingerprints bruised onto his jawline. I don't really remember when his lip got busted open. I dodge out of sight—or dodge the sight of him—nuzzling his neck again with my lips and then my nose. He flinches both times.

Whether he's neutral to me or grudgingly staying by my side because he can't get up, his silence won't tell me anything.

“What?” His voice is flat and monotone, starting and ending in the same disinterested pitch. The bubble in a leveling tool would probably center perfectly over any of the few English words he's spoken so far, and I get the feeling I might as well not be here. I can tell this isn't a follow-up question on my oh-so articulate explanation of his saturated state. This is a: _why the fuck are you trying to kiss my neck, you piece of cookie-cut, junky shit meant to pass for the love of my life?_

He sighs but says nothing else.

“You want some water?”

__ two by two coming through the door (singing like a bird)  
boys and girls voices joined in song (voices in the air)  
fire crackers making so much noise (flying in the air)  
they all start yelling at me: everything you do is wrong 

_ Roark  _

  
The air's thick and toxic with tension, almost like someone used too much cheap aftershave and forgot the courtesy of opening up a window. Every time Mick gains another foot of floorspace, the sound of a shopping cart full of broken dishes being lugged across a carpark by a bag lady resonates throughout the flat, sharply enough to give an image of his frustration without actually having to see him. I lean against the paneling of Mark's doorway and roll my head around as if I'm exasperated with our talk, allowing myself a casual glance in Mick's direction.

 _“How_ the fuck _am I supposed to get this out?”_ His screeches echo throughout the flat.

 _“All I'm saying's,”_ Lydia's sitting on the table a few feet away from him with her legs hanging down to one of the chairs, pestering him in her dry, northeast American accent. Apart from a robe and what looks like someone else's shorts, it's hard not to notice she's not wearing very much, and not in a good way. He's been yelling to himself since he started cleaning, and he's been cleaning since he woke up. Hands open, palms up, and arms in front of him, he's gesturing at the bloodstain on the ground big enough to be the crime scene murder-outline of a toddler. There's a line of comically clear space amongst all the shit on the floor about as wide as him, trailing from the kitchen up to where he kneels. _“You boys don't treat each other the way you treat him.”_

“It is just really difficult for me for understanding, what he is getting out of this that it, um, continues.” Mufti banters on in thick Eurotrash English, sitting crosslegged Indian-style at the foot of Mark's bed.

“Yeah, I know what you mean...” I offer half-heartedly, applying the remark to an entirely different conversation going on in my head while I watch Mick drive himself insane over the blood and glass on the ground. Offhand and glib, I hitch a thumb in his direction and turn back to face the discourse for the disperse of seeds of contempt I've orchestrated, of which I'm now highly bored with. “Better watch out for that one. He's bound to snap like a twig under the weight of a fat, hoarder squirrel in a nuthouse. Any damn second now.”

Both Mark and Mufti look my way like dogs that've just been shown a card trick. I only need to raise an eyebrow and cock my head the right way to reverse the social situation; a few seconds of silence do the rest of the work and they both look away like as though they're the ones who've done something strange by not understanding me.

“Well anyway.” I sniff, unfolding my arms to scratch the side of my nose for want of something to do as I stare at the floor. This whole thing is so vexingly and mind-numbingly boring, but I muster up some more energy and continue on. “If I were you, I'd talk to him—say you're concerned, maybe ask if he's even thought about what he's getting from things with Nick.”

They both cringe. As if physically pained by the suggestion, Mufti closes his eyes. I can't tell if my vague phrasing is still too blunt for them or what, so my attention lingers around whatever either of them has to say for a few seconds more.

“It is not privileged information, yes, but—”

“Well, it is just that Chris...” Mark's explanation starts out strong and dies to a loud whisper as he gets to the name. He looks unfortunately meek sitting on his bed afraid to talk too loud. Gesturing with his hands like he'll find the words in the air, the volume of his voice recovers some. “The subject of personal affairs is sensitive with him. Especially recently.”

“Talk of these things can become as appreciated as last night's events.” Mufti adds for clarity, practically pointing out the door with the line of his gaze at the debris of Chris's last fit. “It would be unwise to upset him today, before the show. Maybe—and very unlikely—we could be talking with him tonight after.”

“Yeah, well, Gail was chatting him up all last night and her limbs are all intact.” I'm hitting a dead end. A ball-less dead end. Sucking on my teeth and feeling whatever film's built over them since I last brushed, I stare at the shut and locked door to the bathroom that's a short ways down the hall outside Mark's room. There's some acerbic kick of irony to their reluctance to say out-loud that their friend has a boyfriend, since both Nick and Chris went in together without any modesty or mystery, and since the shower's been running for nearly half an hour. I thought as an Australian I was supposed to be the one uncomfortable around flagrant homosexuality, but I keep the thought to myself.

“It is different when he speaks with her. She—”

“Well boys,” crouching down to their level, I gesture for them to come closer. “The next best thing to shooting the devil's horseman is to shoot the horse. Catch my drift?”

I give a quick wink and duck out of the room, leaving two mongrels to contemplate a deck of cards, apparently.

“Well — you know, I _wonder_ if any of this has something to do with the fact none of us have ever destroyed _this much_ of each other's property.” Mick's sitting on the floor now with his face buried in his hands, still in the midst of a meltdown. I contemplate trying to talk with him about Nick, but it seems pointless with her still hovering around as the little devil or angel on his shoulder.

“It's not about _bottles._ Last I checked your mommies were all still sending you money.” Lydia says, clearly annoyed with the self-pity party. She's got her feet propped on the back of a chair now and she leans forward carefully, painting her toenails some ugly, blood shade of purple.

“No, it's not about bottles. Is he—are they getting up off their asses?” From the way Mick reacts to her unpleasantly objective reasoning with speechlessness and more angry handfuls of garbage and glass being spitefully thrown away, it seems like my work is already done. “Do I have to get everyone up like a mother taking her small kids to school?”

“They're showering, hon.”

“Fucking... whatever.”

“Y'know, he's got a lot to be admired if you'd stop being so fucking anal. I'd bet he could make it back in New York, which's more than I could say for most of you. Has Nick ever even had to work a real fucking job?”

 _God_. Sometimes, when she talks about Nick, I swear her voice is like the fucking dog upstairs that won't shut up. I take a second to compose myself before raising the back of my hand to our door. My knuckles rap three times against the wood, paint-chipped and splintered from last night's friendly fire. I can hear Katy moving around inside.

“Can I come in?”

__ you raise up your head and you ask, "is this where it is?"  
and somebody points to you and says "it's his"  
and you say, "what's mine?" and somebody else says, "where what is?"  
and you say, "oh, my God, am I here all alone?"  
because something is happening here but you don't know what it is  
do you, Mister Jones? 

_Nick_  
I have to take another drag off my cigarette to steady my hand. The rust and scum caked bathroom is hardly what I'd call a sterile OR, with its intestinal tracts of cockroach-copper piping and off-coffee porcelain fixtures ringed in waterstains. But, unfortunately, it's the only room with a working lock.

“When—When! _Scheiße._ ”

I feel like a back-alley surgeon, digging around Chris's back with the same syringe I used to anesthetize him, made sterile again with cheap vodka and a lighter. Every time he lets an expletive slip and shies away in pain, I have to desensitize myself with another swig of our sterilizing agent. I hear Mick's voice in my head, _'you don't need an exorcist, you need to help him fucking detox'_ , and I keep glancing over at the bottle, unsure if it's far enough out of Chris's reach.

“Y'know, I didn't mean 'say when' literally.”

Poking a sharp object into his open wounds is as sensually pleasing as a toothache scraping against a chalkboard. Most of the glass rinsed out in the shower, but I'm scratching this skinny needle into a gash the size of my forefinger for one stubborn chunk that's been bothering him.

I'm very conscious of the fact that we're both still naked, but it's more of a self-conscious vulnerability than anything. There was nothing sexual or reconciling about showering together. He could hardly walk the way to the bathroom; my assistance was grudgingly accepted after he tried to lift the shirt off over his head and discovered that raising his arms that far made every cut, scrape, welt and bruise on his body sting like hellfire.

I should've fucked off after helping him undress. He slipped getting into the shower so I insisted on chaperoning to help him keep his balance. Now we're here, on the bathroom tile, naked and wet and in the middle of amatuer surgery—both of us with our hair in dripping, dark ringlets against skin as blindingly pasty as a prism. I'm operating, not competing in a beauty pageant. Whatever stolen motel towel he laid on the floor is so saturated with water and blood, it's pooling pink puddles out onto the tile. Like my shirt, it's just more bloodstained shit for the trashcan now.

Chris's hunched forward, stiff as a statue. The skin's flayed and torn around the cut I'm working on, to the point of thick layers peeling faintly at the sides like wilting plantlife. My game of needle-in-the-haystack is turning more and more into jagged-glass-in-the-cherry-pie, and this morning's leftover-takeout breakfast soon overhwelms the taste of my nicotine fix. I swallow whatever just belch-erupted from my throat and suck the taste off with smoke. Placing my cigarette carefully back on the edge of the counter is as good an excuse as any to turn my head away. It hangs off the side and smolders like incense—just with red, mugshot thumbprints all over the paper now.

“Dunno if I can get anymore out. I need some fucking... forceps, or something.” Even if I had anything better than a needle to work with, I can barely watch what I'm doing. What looked like clotting in the shower was just the blood washing away. Some scrapes are raised with scabbing, with dark-brown, dashed and dotted edges, but anything deeper than that still resembles a mess of leaking paint-buckets, with sky-white, knotted-rope vertebrae peeking out. Apart from a few bruises right on the bone, his spine sticks out like a series of small islands in the parting of the literally Red Sea.

“'Forceps'. 'Say when if it hurts'. How is you think I am meant to underst _a—!_ ”

The needle's hit something solid and we both flinch. For fear of paralyzing him for life, suddenly I can't move my hand.

“You alright?”

“Just... get it out.”

I can't see anything but the unmoving back of his head and shoulders, and I'm finding a lot of hatred for how good he is at lying. After poking around a while, trying to manipulate the glass out by dragging it up along the wall of the cut with no luck, I set the syringe aside. My cigarette gets tossed back in my mouth like a pacifier and my hands are planted at either side of the gash, tugging gently to get a better look inside. I can actually see it and can't help being surprised at the size.

“Ready?” I touch my little finger inside to get a feel for how much I can maneuver around, which is hardly at all. I'd like to be able to do this quick, like a bandage, but I don't feel any certainty about how to manage getting the fucking thing out.

He responds with nothing more and nothing less than a silence saying 'do it already', and in goes my finger. The sickness has caught up with him and my heart sinks when I hear him starting to gag. There's a motion of flinching and lurching forward. Like a fish out of water, he flails and grabs hold of the toilet, forcing both me and the glass out of his back as he starts dry heaving, slicing open another horizontal cut on the side of this one like a sideways T in the process. I understand the chance mechanisms of nausea saving the day as well as I can handle all the blood on my hands; I'm immediately shaking the glass off and wiping my fingers with the towel on the floor while he coughs and gags, spilling the vodka-saturated contents of—or lack thereof—his stomach into the toilet with a splash.

“F-fuck...” I'm looking dumbly back and forth from my hand to him until some intensifying feelings of depression or stupidity impel me to do something different. I do what I can to push the already bile-soaked hair back from his face. My hand shrinks away from the idea of rubbing his back as soon as it makes contact with the surface of his skin.

He spits a string of saliva and vomit off his lower lip and reels backward. My hand gets shoved away from his hair while he repositions himself to bury his face in his scraped knees. The sound of a few last coughs are deadened against his legs.

“We should, um,” I feel like a dick. When I get up to hit the handle on the toilet, my knees are red and imprinted with the fabric-pattern of the towels and my legs all pins-and-needles. My head's spinning and I'm just mumbling to myself dumbly. “Y'know, I'll just—help you wash off again. I guess.”

As soon as I turn the water on, he grabs my leg, surfacing from his lap looking like he just swam the English channel. When I see him, the bone-white of his face in contrast with how flushed red his lips are presses on whatever fear and adrenaline center's in my head, like a lodged piece of bullet.

I ease down to the floor beside him, wrapping an arm over his shoulders and folding my legs in. To my surprise, he leans a little bit on me in response. Looking off distantly or casually at something else is even harder in the closet-space of the bathroom than it should be. I've realized by now, I honestly don't know how to read him. I don't know what he's thinking or feeling and it scares me. It scares me and it angers me.

“I mean, I gotta talk to you at some point. I can't fucking deal with what you did in violence—in this bullshit of constantly fighting with and kicking the crap out of each other. It's not gonna cut it anymore.” Some part of me wonders if this is the guilty catharsis that keeps Catholics crawling back to the confessional. I don't want to perpetuate the bullshit—to go through the mess and penance and mess and penance routine, but there's a rush to this, something understandably addictive, and I can only keep so much of my thoughts held back even if this isn't the time, the manner, or the place. “It's fucked up. You fucked up, and it hurts. If you don't want to talk about it – well, I don't even know. I mean, I don't even know who it was. It fucking... _hurts_.”

He spits to the side, then rests his head on his knees.

“Anything that happened, it was not to hurt you.” This is the most acknowledgment I've gotten out of him since he first told me that it happened. If his pain is tangible on sight, I don't know why I lack the instinct to stop. He sighs through his nose, now chewing on his lip and wearing a thousand-yard stare. “I wish that it had not.”

“You act like, like I wanna get over or past it with punishing you. It's not even that you hurt me—”

“That it had not happened.”

“Well, I don't... I don't care you did it, I don't care that it happened – I care how you've dealt with it.” I know I should shut up. He's too sick to do this now.

“I would not have told you I had been with someone else, if it were not because I care for you.”

“I don't know. I don't know what the shit I'm saying, because I do care that you did it. I know it makes me a hypocrite, that I don't have any claim on you, but I fucking care, a lot. But that's—it's not even the issue right now. I'm worried about you and I don't know what I'm supposed to do to get you talk to me.” My anger's got nowhere left to be displaced, and for a moment I think it'll all come flooding out my pores in a dizzying rush. But nothing happens. There's just this flat bitterness sloshing uselessly in my veins like beer gone stale. I look at him and there's pain there too deep to be part of regret for cheap thrills or drunk mistakes. “I... Are you okay?”

Shutting his eyes, he looks ready to either faint or cough up blood.

“Oh, yeah.” He smirks instead, the kind of smile I'd expect to see at a divorce hearing or on a clerk dealing with a inhuman customer. It doesn't look right and part of me's glad it's not directed towards me. “Dandy.”

“I think we have some gauze somewhere. You don't want my help rinsing off again, I guess?”

Eyes still closed, he extends his thumb and moves his head against it, scratching the bridge of his nose. Some time passes. The both of us listen to the water run and run just to circle the drain.

“No, I don't think so.”  


__ I keep singing them sad, sad songs, y'all  
sad songs is all I know  
it's just a line, oh, but it tells a story, baby  
you got to get the message  
a stone message, honey, a lovely line, baby  
I'm worried in mind, watch me 

When we arrive at the venue, I'm overcome with a feeling of confusion or error. The last I saw of Chris was a rather pathetic, comatose scene on the couch in his new outfit of gauze and underwear. It doesn't seem plausible that the band's going through with playing a show tonight, and I have the acute sense that he's still at the flat sleeping. I can't get one fucking productive thing done with him stuck in my mind. As long as Roark is leading me toward the club, though, I retain some unconfident direction.

I know he's bound not to have brought a guitar, so I'm lugging one of Mick's around in its hefty, hardshell casing. The pavement is slick and shiny with melted snow and electronic advertisement from the block of shop and bar windows. I nearly lose my footing with the weight of the guitar and the distraction of staring off at the cityscape and the pink and orange sundown floating behind it, but Roark grabs my arm and pulls me to the entrance door like I'm the oversized, inept dog he's walking. We both push through the doors resenting each other, into some dank and windowless club.

“Excuse me.” He raises his voice and taps on a bell at the kiosk three times, just at the forefront of the club. He's not so much startled the woman behind it as forced her to pry her attention from her tattered book to the person in front of her, who, judging by her face, she already knew was there without the service bell.

Between the dim-lighting and the smoke, I don't know how she can see well enough to read in here. The place is a fucking dive. More than half the people present are nine-to-fiver drunkards, and the rest are dancing like patients at the laughing academy to a mix of songs that sound like one watered down, broken synthesizer melting indistinguishably into the next. I've no idea how they'll react to the show in store for them. I just know we're in the reverse position of Marlene in Destry Rides Again right now; stuck in a bar full of drunk Germans, and we're the only cowboys.

“Right. Tonight's act. It's—it sounds like...” With some broad English accent to which I can't pinpoint any region over the house music, she reaches around for something off the desk, probably a program, but turns up empty handed. Instead, she sits upright with a body-throwing sigh, apparently weathered from years in this line of work. “It's quite like people putting up shelves.”

There's no humor that I can see in this remark. I feel bitter and irritated and I just want to drop this fucking guitar.

“Scotland?” Roark purrs, inquisitive and leaning elegantly forward on his elbows.

Coughing and holding a used cigarette in place, she clicks a flame from her lighter and shields it with one hand. Indifferent to his interest in her as well as any interest we may have in actual business, she tosses the lighter and doesn't waste a glance when it slides off the desk.

“Ireland. Do you want in or not? It's dreadful but it's quite short. We don't give refunds.” She explains, giving me a face full of smoke and spinning her wrist for rushed, theatric emphasis to get us the fuck out of her breathing space as fast as possible. Tapping ash off to wherever it may fall—which happens to be on a tower of booklets for the club's events tonight—she points over to the front of her desk and looks distractedly off into space. “Just read the flyer.”

“There's no flyer there.” I say, mindlessly informative. Out of her sight behind the desk, Roark's knee connects painfully with the side of my leg as a silent _shut up_.

She coughs again and the cigarette falls from her mouth.

“There's—well, there's bound to be one on a wall somewhere. Go explore.”

“What part of Ireland?”

At this point, Roark's persistence is as productive as a cat pawing at the glass of an aquarium. I step forward, pushing him out to the side, out of my way.

“Well, no – we're not here to get into the show. I mean, we are. I'm with the band.”

I raise up the guitar at level with the desk in explanation. She looks in back, gets an affirmative nod from a colleague, then meets my eyes and opens her mouth to answer, but Roark forces his way up front again. My shoulder feels like it's going to snap out of place when the guitar case falls to a suspended end in the air at my arm's length.

“My friend and I just moved here from England—'recording an album right now. He's our vocalist—just broke up with his girlfriend.” He winks at her, then elbows me. “What'y doing in Germany?”

“I'm—y'know, I'm engaged.” The last word comes out as a question, but she looks to the side in consideration and seems to settle quite confidently on it. She talks with her hands, practically waving us away as she looks for an excuse.

“I don't see a ring.”

“I'm a lesbian. No. Well. Necrophiliac. I'm a lesbian necrophiliac. Whatever you need to hear – I'm engaged to a dead woman. Just... your shelving friends are along that hall, past the bar—it goes back, stage left, and, and... Fuck off. Yes, that's the one. Fuck off.”

__ then he cries, then he screams, saying  
life is full of pain, I'm cruisin' through my brain  
and I fill my nose with snow, and go Rimbaud 

  
“What is—are you listening?” Chris stops suddenly, still sounding unfamiliar with the words he's using and yet hyper-conscious of everything outside of the language barriers. He was telling me something about Kafka and nudism and my focus sort of waned. Mufti keeps walking in and out of the room, going over a scrap of paper with Chris, which I can only assume is some kind of checklist accompanying the setlist for tonight.

I've just been watching his mouth move to form words, not even noticing the scowl breaking my face. It glowers back at me in the reflection on his sunglasses.

“Think if we went down to the studio later, 'might help you feel better.” I offer somewhat firmly—more than suggesting, at least—discarding the previous conversation with the casual tone in my voice. I'm lounging on the couch, holding onto a beer, with my head limply cast back, watching him at the table. He's hunched over a tray of coke—courtesy of the club—and snorting fat lines with a rolled up business card, probably with one of the club employees' names on it.

“I feel fine; I never said otherwise. You, I am not so sure.”

He calls himself an optimist, but I can rarely ever see it. Not unless he's in manic meth mode.

There's a mirror at the side of the couch reflecting the door. It keeps playing tricks on my eyes every time someone walks in or out. The backstage is dim but still better lit than the rest of the building. The shades slip down the bridge of his nose as he sniffs hard and loud, trying to keep the powder inside. The light shadows his sunken eyes when he sits upright, filling in the natural sunglasses shape beneath his actual glasses that drugs and sleep-deprivation have outlined, like charcoal in a coloring book.

When we first met, I could never figure out why I liked hearing him talk. I thought it was just the accent at first, but I never shut up for the sake of hearing sounds out of anyone else's mouth in Berlin. Thinking there was some pattern in the way he'd awkwardly stumble through English words, and not that I could possibly have had a bit of an infatuation, I'd go off in thought when he talked to me—loosely trying to relate his sentence structure to whatever mathematical sequences and arrangements create the combinations that permit songs to get locked in your head.

If there was a casual way to explain the fact that I enjoyed the sound of his voice, it escaped me. It's just a weird fucking thing to say, and if there was a way to sugarcoat it with social competence, I couldn't and still can't think of it. His speech is still disheveled, melodic, and charming, like a Chopin nocturne, but, right now, I just wish he would say something that isn't deflecting or lying.

“Aren't you cold?” I'm throwing the question like a lifeline in the sea of this long, one-way conversation we've already had, or failed to have, last night. On the subject of him ingesting more drugs than his bodyweight can handle—in foolish combinations, even worse.

From his waistline to his chest, he's wrapped in layers of bandaging, like a white rendition of his normal corset and belts get-up. The usual leather pants hang loose off his waist, exposing either of his hip bones to stick out, and framing the short, pale line of skin from the end of his bandages to his belt. I made the gauze as thick as possible without restricting his movement, but it was already spotting blood by the time I pinned down the last layer. The whole of his back is dried brown now. Somehow I thought it'd make it easier to forget the bones and bruises at the time, but it really doesn't make any difference.

“Yes, a little.” He says, perking up and dropping the card to stop and think. I get the feeling I should've been more specific in my wish for honesty.

“Put that shit away and come over here.”

The silence that follows feels very final. From the front of the club, the speakers are humming and buzzing through the walls. I have this intense dread, like a pill stuck in my throat. It's hung around all day, tugging a storm cloud along behind it.

Mufti comes back through the doorway again, this time with Alex trailing behind him. Chris readjusts the shades over his eeyes. They both crowd near him, chatting in low whispers. Mufti puts a hand on Chris's shoulder, and Chris responds with a sneer—his speech sprinkled with exasperation and impatient sighing.

It's Betty Curtis or maybe the Shangri-Las wailing melodically from the club speakers. It's out of place, but I can't pick Italian apart from English with how featureless the music is coming through the walls. If I'm afraid that there's more to all that happened than he's said, or that he's snorted, smoked, and shot more than he's said, the fear seems to be rooted in the act of omission one way or the other. It makes the exclusion and the silence and the small talk as painful and impacting as getting punched in the throat.

Mufti and Alex are both hovering around him like he's a broken piece of pottery just put back together, and they're waiting on the glue to dry before life can resume its normal pace. With his hands raised to either side of his head in restrained, violent frustration, he somehow yells at them with a hushed voice. Alex walks out of the room in a tangible melancholy, and the rest of the conversation that I can make out by body language alone is comprised mainly of arguing. Mufti lets Chris's shoulder go and folds his arms over his chest. He raises his voice for a while, and then trails out of the room as well, leaving Chris with the cold, blank mask of a face his glasses portray.

I dampen the rather inflammatory bad mood of the room with a swig of beer.

“Everything alright?”

“I don't think... Just—I cannot deal with very much today.” He whispers, more out of exhaustion than secrecy, sounding understandably defeated. After the past week spent at odds with himself, and additional grief from the rest of the band, if he's mad at himself, them, or me, it's gotten hard to distinguish. He leaves the table and lets himself down onto the couch next to me.

I wrap my arms around him and rest my head on his chest. His skin is freezing. I grab hold onto one of his hands, stroking the back with my thumb and lacing my fingers through his. My ear's pressed against his gauze-taped breast like I'm some kind of human lie detector, and I can hear it thumping all erratic like an out of control washing-machine on steroids.

“Your heart's going _really_ fast.” My fingers untie from his and reach for his wrist, feeling for an artery. He pulls the bottle from my thighs and I follow by cupping the neck of it. The prospect of him thinking to drink more of the problem as an antidote puts me a little more than _on edge._ He's trying to grab it away—definitely not playing anymore—but I hold it steady and swat at him to let go. He manages to shove past me and reach for the bottle yet again. I'm not playing anymore, either, and I grab his hand and squeeze to get the point across. “Drinking's gonna make it worse.”

He sighs one of his _I-don't-know-why-I-let-you-breathe-the-same-air-as-me_ sighs.

Having managed to locate his heartbeat on the side of his wrist, I let his other hand go in good faith. He complies and brushes my hair back with it. The vein's not just throbbing against my fingers; it's trying to speed-bag punch it's way out of his skin. I'm not sure where to go from here. Call for Mufti? A doctor? Yes, right before he has to go on stage. One of my better ideas. The only impulse that speaks reason to me is to get a second witness and see if I'm not just paranoid.

It seems like there should be some memory attached to how badly skinned his knuckles look, but I'm drawing blanks. 

“Are you keeping track of my pulse now? I think I've got an pen here somewhere, if you need to writing it down.”

“I love you, Chris.” I say short and pointedly, like it's an argument. He shifts me down to his waist trying to sit up straight and reach the pack of cigarettes and matchbook in his back pocket. It's not surprising so much as unusual or noteworthy that he doesn't do anything to escape, but instead sighs and grumbles some more.

“No remarks?” Jesting, only in immediate afterthought, seems like a poor way to express my approval. Again, he does and says nothing in response. If anything, the mood just feels darker with expectations of otherwise. “ _'It is only you and my parents who are calling me that'?_ Nothing? An _'I love you, too?'_ ”

I hear the last one as soon as I say it, and I immediately regret it.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Somewhere in the gray between amusement and numbness, he laughs weakly at my mock-German accent. He puts the matches, the pack, and the beer on the table in front of us.

Pushing myself along the couch, I stretch out from his lap to the pillow beside him. I look up at his lips and he taps my chin with his knuckle. It's so simple, and so full of complexities, how skin touching skin can begin to satisfy a need. There's a science to sleep, to eating, to sex—formulas which I can understand; things that either are or are not, repetitions and time intervals that make numerical sense. The fulfillment in his fingers tracing my scalp has yet to make such sense to me. The tickle in the way my skin chills and warms at the same time; like he's found a button, turned a switch somewhere in my brain. I don't have the words for where these things come from.

“You mean the impersonation or trying to fuck with you?”

“I think that you had better be finding different things to fuck me than to be insulting and making me think about my parents.”

“I said fuck _with_ you.”

I move in. The smack of skin sounds from our mouths, through the room, off the walls and back up my ears seamlessly. He tilts his head sideways, leaning forward, and suggests the same to me with the hand he's got at my chin. After the innocent peck pulls away, I part my mouth and move in again, brushing his upper lip between mine. Lazily, my tongue touches at the corner of his mouth. Our mouths open, tongues meet, then come to a close. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In contrast with all last night's sinister biting and chewing, there's a marked gentleness to this now. I cup the side of his face and he responds grabbing two-handed at the back of my head. I pull back, taking his busted bottom lip with me halfway. Taking his wrists, then reaching to catch his arms when he pulls away, I stretch out, sitting upright in his lap. The way he moves and returns my affections is so restrained—he's silently telling me he can't or won't get his mind off who might walk in.

Unwarily, he ducks his arms out from my grip. Still returning a kiss, his tongue's tied with mine. I'm nearly purring and I reach down and circle his waist, fidgeting curiously with one of his belts. Something clicks unbuckled and I'm drawing the leather carefully from each loop, full up with a heated anticipation.

His response is instant. He seizes my hands and yanks them off his waist. It hurts.

“I have barely fifteen minutes.” He whispers, hovering around my ear. I kiss the skin on his neck, under his chin, and my fingers touch his bare shoulders—the exposed area of his waist. I've fallen into a crack of space between him and the arm of the couch and pushed it out, opening the expanse so I'm sitting beside him with our legs tangled.

“S'that instructions? You're always done up with those belts and chains and locks – that's half the time right there.” I've grabbed onto one of his pantslegs and started tugging—pulling them titillatingly low—but he doesn't like it. He's grabbing his belts and the waist of his pants and pulling them back up, fighting me off. Message received; I back off his clothes. He sits upright, pushing my legs and hands away. The glasses fall between the cushions. “Where are the rest of them, anyway?”

“Just because I kiss you... This is not place for that. Not now.” He wipes his mouth on his arm, apparently content to ignore whatever excitement he's brought out in me. I've thrown my arms around either of his shoulders, crossing them over his chest like a scarf.

“I don't know. – You realize we haven't had sex in, like...” I whisper sweetly into the back of his neck, a mess of hot breath and spit. The mirror at the couch's side has caught my eye again. I'm peering over his shoulder now to watch him. “Weeks.”

“A week and a half.” He whispers in correction. My hands rise to either side of his face, pulling up into his hair and messing it comically. The indifferent, disaffected pout sealed on him cracks into a smile when he notices both what's caught my eye and what I'm doing to his head. I knock it off and smooth his hair back instead—combing it like mine.

He waves me away and I return to his naked shoulders, pressing my nose on the back of his neck and peering past to stare at his reflection. When my mouth meets the whispery, invisible blond hairs of his neck, it sparks something in my stomach I have no idea why. I bully him a little bit forward, closer to the mirror. Trying to flatten him against the couch is redundant and useless; his arms and shoulders are locked underneath him and I'm not too keen on putting pressure on his back. Either way, there's no appeal in it if he doesn't want me to do it.

With him down on his hands and knees, though, my mind's traveling south to the deepest gutters. I wrap myself around him, lying over him, with one arm overlapping his and the other reaching up his backside. I pull down on one of his belt-loops, just enough to expose him. I'm dragging so much sexual baggage around, from the unfortunate end to things last night and the uneventful shower this morning, that I can't stand any prudishness at this point. It doesn't have to be a Hallmark moment; I'm more than happy to do something quick and mutual. I'm finding myself expecting someone to shout 'clear', over the smallest touches. I lay myself over him again so he can feel my need, and understand the frustration, and he makes a sound somewhere between agitated disbelief and intrigue.

“Pretty please?” I'm watching the mirror, close and curious to see how he reacts or how he looks beneath me.

The door is thrown open behind us. Mark walks in, looking agitated and ready to give someone a piece of his mind until he sees me, on hands and knees on top of Chris. We make eye contact in the mirror and, horrified, he shields his face with one hand.

“It is... um. We are waiting for Chris.”


	3. Trouble

_ **Part III** _   


> _“For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me. And what I dreaded has happened to me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, for **trouble** comes.”_  
> 
> 
>   
>  Job 3:25, 26  
>  

> 
>   
> 

__ well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you and then he kneels  
he crosses himself and then he clicks his high heels  
and without further notice he asks you how it feels  
and he says, "here is your throat back, thanks for the loan"  
because something is happening here but you don't know what it is  
do you, Mister Jones? 

  
_Nick_  
To not give a fuck—it's not a persona that you can try on and see how it fits, it's the sad solitary truth of broken souls. It's the moment when you realize what not caring—about other people, the standards they hold you to, your self worth, _etcetera and so forth_ —really means. It's about as liberating as it is debilitating. A foul feeling that I will later reflect on. Small sacrifices, over time, have the potential to morph into insurmountable missteps that may end up costing much more than you bargained for. Nothing is free. You can't sell your soul and expect to buy it back. The devil doesn't run a pawn shop, he's a loan shark.

With all the grooves in the restroom tiling under my knees, I could be kneeling on rocks. I know there must be bruises starting in from the pressure. I can feel the folds of my pants digging into the backs of my legs, pinching the skin. I'm dope-sick and my muscles are like frozen meat sitting out to thaw, aching as the memory of my last fix melts and cracks into withdrawal. Every second that I get through, the next feels harder than the last. It's like I'm ice trying to stay under water—it's harder to breathe, harder to stay down, harder not to break.

This guy's getting louder while he tires out from physical exertion, grabbing my hair and pulling me into his crotch, but I'm underwater and everything's far off. Some survivalist part of me recognizes it's not going to be long before this crests into an orgasm for him, and, like intuiting that I'll make it to the surface before the end, it gives me enough faith and strength to keep going.

“Fuck...” He holds my shoulder, on the edge of the toilet seat. “Fuck, that's...”

I'm trying to keep calm. I'm trying and bracing myself, but warding off the gag reflex at this point is nearly impossible and more useless as the whole thing goes on. I remind myself that there is light at the end of the tunnel, or this bloke's shaft, rather—a fucked up metaphor for my miserable, residual motivation—and slowly but surely 'rock bottom' will dim into another suppressed memory.

Over time, your self-image adapts and justifies the idea that, _well, I've already done that, so what makes this any worse?_ A deviated defense mechanism. But deep down, you know it's worse. It's always worse. The farther you fall, the harder it becomes to find reasons to climb out. I'm burning internal bridges, and once they're gone, that's it. _It's curtains._

 _Just fucking cum already,_ I'm thinking, and my stomach creeps up into my chest. It's not as if I'm a stranger to this gesture, but there is an incontestable difference between a lover's desirous thrust and the driving force that's presently coming and going in my throat. This tedious, two-step motion is comparable to, at best, the rocking of a boat. Though, sea sickness hardly fits to describe the cocktail of ailments from which I'm suffering. Even if he's always hopelessly in my thoughts, no part of me wants to have Chris in mind right now. When all you really care about is yourself, you use the tools you have at your disposal. So— _hypothetically_ —let's say another person's body becomes a vehicle for getting yourself off; you don't think, you just do. I know this isn't going to last too much longer, and that I'll soon be looking on the moment after it's passed. It's a temporary setback and I'll have bounced back in no time. I can see the light and the ripples in the surface of this fucking trench I'm in. The sick part is, just as our bodies adapt to their surroundings, as well do our minds. A burdened conscious. The human mind; a marvelous high- _fucking_ -functioning machine. The more bad you've done, the less it bothers you. The more time you donate to these immoral acts, the less time you have to feel remorse for them.

It's not another minute before it's over. He lets my hair go and I spit a mouthful of cum onto the floor. No inhibitions. That's how people get so fucked up. You have to decide what sins you can live with. I'm catching my breath with wet, raspy coughs—there's an audible zip, and then he stands over me and digs into my back pocket for my wallet. Whatever money is in there, he takes, knowing that it was already his the moment I approached him. He crosses my palm with my wax-paper trophy and drops the empty wallet by my feet.

Chris's voice breaks through the door as the guy walks out, mid-song and wailing through the house speakers. Some hollow guilt flips my gut but I open the bundle anyway. It's slack, but I can't even fucking care. It's enough for right now, and that's what matters. I haven't got anything on me to cook with, but I don't panic. Roark probably has some gear on him. He always has some gear on him. I fold the bundle out like the spout on a milk carton and tap out a bump onto the side of my knuckle.

People who look back on their mistakes and write books based around those same mistakes, and then spin those acts of evil into lessons learned are—for lack of a better phrase—full of shit. Reformed. Born again. Saved. These are the people who lose sleep at night because they can't deal with what atrocious, stone-cold monsters they've become, so they write self-help books, become motivational speakers, drown themselves in organized religion or, they deny the existence of a high power altogether. Unaccountable by default. _Do as I say, not as I do._ The Prodigal Son is not a story of redemption; it is a cautionary tale foreshadowing the human condition and the inevitable damnation of our souls— _metaphorically speaking_. These, the modern day prodigal sons and daughters, are the ones who've got it all wrong. Not me. I don't pretend to be a good person. I am woefully self aware.

I snort the bump, leave the stall, and check myself in the mirror. I look like I've been wrestling wild animals in the tropics.

I am a disgusting person.

I throw some water on my face and head out into the crowd, drying it off by wiping it into my hair. It's a confusing ocean of people, but they're the kind of shady characters that make up a perfect framework for my purpose. My degenerate behavior doesn't stand out here. 

I'm trying not to look up at the stage. I know he can't spot me in this field of drunk animals, but I'm afraid of making eye contact with him anyway.

I'm a drug addict, and becoming a drug counselor will not miraculously make me any less of a junky; only more of a hypocrite. Regret is counter-productive. You live and you learn, but not without consequences. _Life sucks and then you die, so let's all get fucking high._

I spot Roark over by the bar with Lydia and Mick, standing a bit taller over everyone else. I push through a few people to get over—a kissing couple, college kids, a group of girls too young to be here.

Mick's holding a beer and doesn't look nearly as sour as he did this morning, but Lydia is yapping in his direction. There's not only visible disinterest being shown in reaction to whatever she's saying to him, but unadulterated annoyance.

Sneaking between them and Roark, unseen, I pull on his arm. We lurk off to the side of the bar like he was waiting for me to come back and lead the dance.

“Got any sticks on you?” I just barely manage any comprehensible words in his ear over the music. He looks pleasantly surprised. Maybe curious as to why I'm sharing my score with him.

“Always.” He says, extending his arm in the direction of the restroom.

There's a crack of thunder from the stage. It'd be hard to discern or think much of in the context of their performance, but a flurry of startled, empathetic gasps follow in a wave from the audience, and the music stops shortly after. Roark's head flies back to look, but my stomach is sinking and I can feel the sharp cracks of ice in my muscles like glass and I don't want to see.

I try to make out what's going on from Roark's face, but he turns to me, shocked and bewildered, and says something that's drowned out by the commotion from the people around us.

“What happened?” I yell, trying to be heard over the white noise of everyone talking amongst themselves. I can't even hear myself.

 _“I said, I think Chris took a fall.”_ He points to the stage.

I don't want to see and I don't know what I'm more afraid of at this point: leaving Chris to get my fix, or not leaving him and not getting my fix.

The music's starting up again, with some ear-ringing clang of metal. I don't let my eyes follow after Roark's finger. I tap his back instead, gesturing at the men's room. He starts in my direction, but Mick's pushing his way through the crowd towards us, shouting something about Chris over the din. My heart takes a leap. I dodge out of sight and Roark shoves past three drunkards standing shoulder-to-shoulder to meet him.

_“They carried him in back?”_

_“No! I need help carrying him back – they're going to try the rest of the set without him.”_

__ well, I pulled on trouble's braids and I hid in the briars  
out by the quick mud, stayin' away from the main roads  
passin' out wolf tickets, downwind from the blood hounds  
and I lay by a cypress as quiet as a stone  
'til the bleeding stopped 

_ Roark  _

  
“Why don't you _get off my dick?_ ”

“I _can't do this_. I can't—I can't fucking do this. I can't fucking... _believe you_.”

Nick and Mick are directly in each other's faces, almost touching noses, barking back and forth, in-between, during, and all through-out whatever the other one has to say. They'd look ready for a violent kiss, but Nick grabs the tray of coke off the table and smashes it on the floor in feral statement of his anger. Mick's just gotten his coat from the couch where Chris's lying unconscious. Nick's hovering around the table with his hands balled into fists.

“Where the hell are you going?” Nick's outside-voice rings out with a deep, scratchy bellow we're all used to hearing set to music. His whole act of indignation would be very convincing if not for his pin-drop pupils and the itch on his arm he keeps having to scratch. The tics are so pathetic to watch; they betray any conceivable remark, speech, argument, alibi, academic essay, or interpretive dance to verify his sobriety.

Sticking to his story isn't muddying up the truth in Mick's eyes or creating any doubts in his head. It's just pissing him off more.

I've checked the surrounding faces in the room and I guess that I'm mimicking them well enough—staring thoughtfully forward, which makes me look concerned but still collected. I don't know how much it matters if everyone's engrossed in the argument, but I'm so worked up it's hard to think rationally. I've only just noticed Anita and Mufti are among the small audience they've attracted into the room. I don't know where Anita came from, but Mufti's actually ditched the rest of the band, leaving them on-stage to improvise with two members absent now.

“I have a real relationship. I have somewhere to be.”

“No, you have to be right here with me, motherfucker.”

Gail's perched watchfully at the end of the couch beside Chris, growing more irate in visible, physical language by the minute. Clenched fists, raised shoulders, tense limbs, overall bad posture. There's something about her movements and demeanor around him, about the whole subject, that makes me nervous. Before I can even work the unconscious flinch-reflex to turn away or pretend I have a reason to be staring at her, she pivots like an owl and burns a foul look at me.

I elbow Lydia, waiting for her to notice me so we can just get the fuck out of here, but she's beyond distracted. It's too much gossip material to leash back both her petty two faces. 

“You are so fucked up right now, it's not even funny.” Mick shakes his head, sounding flat and serious as if he's calling a time-out on the argument.

I notice now Nick doesn't have my belt on him. The itty-bitty nervousness pinching my gut expands chain-reaction style to a dread that feels more like someone's trying to open an umbrella in my throat.

I don't want to listen to this anymore. The drinks are mediocre here besides, and I could probably find more attractive junkies with better dental hygiene in Berlin's slums to stare at than the women out front at the bar.

I can't find my lighter. I follow the search all the way to a ratty hole in my left jacket-pocket. A nasty memory has successfully snuck up and cranked the umbrella just a bit wider.

I'm fidgeting with the loose threads and my eyes have gotten stuck on Chris. I'm nearly frozen as much as he's nearly pulling off the look of consciousness. He's in the fetal position on the couch, supposedly staring down at his hands behind a pair of sunglasses. At least, it'd probably fool me if I hadn't helped lug him back here. Showing no reaction to the squabble, all in his name, he sort of resembles the unlucky body in someone's plan to puppeteer a corpse. It sets my teeth on edge. He's pale enough. But it's not that out-of-place in a bar and parttime strip-club across the street from a cemetery. Likewise, my paralysis is just a stunning burst of nerves.

“You're so full of shit, I don't even know how you manage staying upright. It defies gravity.” Mick drops his coat onto the couch again. It lands in place to cover Chris's head.

“Oh, get fucked.”

“He nearly _splits his skull open_...”

“ _Get fucked!_ ”

“And you care so much, you—”

“I don't have to listen to this shit from you!” Nick takes a step back from screaming in Mick's face to artfully kick over a chair beside the table. I'd take a guess that he's noticed Anita now as well and he's starting to sweat as much as me over certain things that could be said in front of certain people.

One of the club owners and the Irish woman from the kiosk are loitering out in the hall, watching through the doorframe with hand-over-mouth concern. I doubt they're planning on paying full price for the gig anymore. They're exchanging what could be stern, negotiating words with Mufti, while some guy is already finding a safe path around them with a broom and dustpan for the glass and wasted coke.

“You're off _getting stoned_ while me and Roark have to clean up the messes you've _fucking caused!_ ”

“Keep fucking talking when you don't know dick about anything you're saying. That's what—”

“I already _know_ what you were doing! Christ! If you're gonna lie to me—”

“That's what you're good at!”

“If you're going to lie to me, tell me I've won the goddamn lottery and Marilyn Monroe's waiting out in the car to suck my dick.”

Gail jolts up from beside Chris to get between them as they square off like vicious dogs. She looks ready to thrash either one of them.

“We are talking about _Chris_ , not _you two_. It doesn't _fucking matter_ who has done what!” Her yelling is hoarse and hysterical—uncharacteristic enough that they both go quiet, for a moment at least.

There's a sick fascination in listening to all of this—trying to guess how much she knows, or what Chris's told her, if anything. If he hadn't fucking passed out, the intervention could've been put off until I was ready. I still feel paranoid and like the center of attention, though, and both warmth and sickening worry continue to emanate through my stomach from that.

“He's trying to get _high_ while Chris's collapsed unconscious and... and cracked his head open. _Roark_ was more eager to help me carry his supposed fucking boyfriend off the stage.” Mick jabs a finger in Nick's direction and leans forward, bending his legs ever so slightly, suggesting that he's being asked to assume the kneeling position. My name's used in such a way that lends gravity to what he's saying. It's a bit insulting. Although, it doesn't manage the job of neutralizing the exaggeration of Chris's injuries. Nick has meanwhile completely lost it at the suggestion of his same-sex affair in front of Anita. The word _'boyfriend'_ in particular seems to have doubled the tension in the room. “ _I spent my whole goddamn day trying to make the flat fucking liveable after the shit you pulled last night!_ ”

The both of them look ridiculous standing in front of her—three feet tall, indeed like they're kids trying to argue to their mom the validity of the stupid thing they did because the other broke a toy. I feel both a fear and an admiration for her, as an equal—a challenge.

“Shit I pulled? So I asked him to attack me?” There's a lost stretch of skin between Nick's eyes and his eyebrows now with how hard he's grimacing. It's quite unattractive, but the black space that's taken over helps him with the sincerity of all his snarling about the supposed absurdity in everything Mick says, at least. He's sweating.

“What huge fucking blindspot is preventing you from seeing that your actions are bigger than just you?”

“ _Get fucked, you cunt!_ ”

“ _Shut up!_ Both of you!”

“He's the one that needs to keep his goddamn voice down!” Nick snarls.

“I should shut up?” Mick sits down in the only chair remaining, shifts about indignantly, then bangs his fists on the table. A beer bottle tips over and rolls off the edge, hitting the floor with a hard ring.

“You should keep the fuck out of my business.”

“I should be quiet? Right. I should be quiet. The two of them can have screaming sex and screaming fist-fights all night, but I need to shut up. I'm the one—”

“ _Neither_ of you know anything of what you are speaking!” Gail yanks on the back of Mick's seat and tips it out towards her from under him. Too little, too late for silencing him, since Anita looks thoroughly troubled and confused. He jumps to his feet, knocks over his coat into the beer he's spilled while trying to reach for it from Chris's head, and she sends the chair sliding in Nick's direction, who has begun to turn red.

This time I don't have to pretend to be full of outrage and surprise like the rest of them. I feel this twist in the pit of my stomach and I think I might need to step outside. Mufti looks like he might actually interject, but the silence goes on. What does she know? What the fuck has Mufti learned since this morning? Lydia's fixated on the argument and she shushes him even though he hasn't said anything.

I notice I've worn out the hole in my pocket to the point that the whole thing's ready to fall off, and I decide to give up on trying to look around interestedly at everyone. I'm drawn to Chris, for whatever reason—nerves, maybe—and am fascinated to find he started a nosebleed while he was hidden under the jacket. It's streaking down his mouth and chin in dark, wet red lines. I consider drawing some attention to this, but I don't know if I'd want to ruin any potential fun of Gail bringing armageddon onto Sick, Dick, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Sneezy and Sleepy here.

“Jesus fucking christ!”

“I'm _sorry!_ I'm sorry that I'm getting upset—apparently, I'm willfully making the decision to feel like _shit_. Apparently. Really, I apologize.” Mick blabbers on.

“Will you tell him to shut the fuck up already?”

“They fight, _every day_. We're all living in fucking chaos—”

“How are you—how _the fuck_ are you living in chaos? Because of—of us two going through a tough time? That fucking somehow puts _you_ in chaos? Somebody put their cock in his mouth and shut him up.”

The words rest in the air, waiting to be shattered by Mick's response, and he's swift to oblige them.

“Sorry, Nick... Not all of us enjoy that the way you and your boyfriend do.”

The livid, conscious part of Nick's mind produces a scowl that'd give an angel the evil-eye, but the compulsive, unconscious part that's slave to his habit is subtly rubbing his nose and scratching his skin. It's that word again: _'boyfriend'_.

“Fuck, that's right. I forgot.” Mick's been provoked and he does the eureka hand-raise and turns to face the crowd, eager to share his enlightenment with the rest of us in that matter-of-fact voice. “He doesn't need to take care of where he sticks his dick, because his relationships all last as long as tattoos.”

It's pretty surreal the way Mick's head flies to the side when Nick's fist connects with his jaw. With Anita present, he was bound to at least get himself matching noses with Chris at some point. He doubles back but still takes the punch standing.

Gail inserts herself between them yet again, shoving her palms forward into Nick.

“You fucking asshole!” I would expect Mick to lunge back at him anyway, but he just holds his face sorely in a restrained, I'm-better-than-that posture. Gail's noticed Chris finally, and she can't leave the two of them fast enough to get by his side. She crouches on one knee at his side. Pulling his head back by the hair with one hand, she waves her hand out to anyone who's paying attention for tissue or a napkin or anything.

Initiate shocked faces, followed by concern and borderline fear.

“Yeah, you love him, so fucking much, you just—you sit back and let him slowly kill himself.”  


__ the boy was in the hallway drinking a glass of tea  
from the other end of the hallway a rhythm was generating  
another boy was sliding up the hallway 

  
_I give the bar another once-over, feeling like a vulture on the lookout for jackals and hyenas. There's no point in scavenging if something else already has eyes on your prey. A woman in a red dress and one-AM sunglasses gives me a smile from her lonely stool at the end of the bar, four seats away from him. I can just make out her ratted, black hair from the train engine cloud of smoke circling her. She makes a come-hither gesture, and it's tempting, but I'm here on business._

_The immunity I've developed to the rush of playing on a stage, to the addictive anxiety, it's like all those years of building up a tolerance have been erased. It's back—the gripping panic that's impossible to explain why the hell it feels so good.. It's freeing. It's nerve-wracking; freeing because it's nerve-wracking._

_“Got a light?”_

_He's dented and bruised and wrapped in black leather, worn down from tread and impact to a skeletal frame—but there's this sheen to his eyes that says the passenger is detached from the machinery. His eyes are probably the most prominent feature of his face, if not the most deceitful. They grin from his sharp, angular skull—facial structure I could sharpen a knife on—maybe a bit bewildered, but otherwise blissfully ignorant while the rest of him falls apart._

_It should be easy. Easy enough._

_Talking through clenched teeth and rolled tobacco, I lean his way, just to make it clear that my need extends only to the need of an excuse to talk to him. Our eyes meet, somehow without making contact. His body smiles and fumbles through worn pockets too shredded to hold anything as small as a matchbook. The lights are on, but the occupants are all drugged out on the floor. He looks at home in his sleazy tavern, hunched over and leaning into the bar like he's ready to fall asleep._

_His hands come out empty from his pockets. He shrugs in some deserting gesture, an aloof 'you're-on-your-own', and he resumes ignoring me, as well as the rest of the physical world, for ecstatic intoxication._

_“So, seeing as you're Nick's bitch and all, it seems you've been taking up quite a lot of my studio time.” I mutter this like a weather forecast, offhand and airy in spite of my bared teeth and what I might as well call a concealed weapon. I sit down on the stool next to him. Throwing his head back, he laughs with taunting release while I strike up a flame under my cigarette with my own lighter._

_“I have seen it differently.” He enunciates, all deep and delicate, back-of-the-throat syllables, mangled in the lost battle to resemble English. Lounging on his elbows, he smiles from ear to pointed ear. With his chin raised high, he throws up his brows and rolls his glazed eyes around in what's an almost girlish gesture. “The way that I look at it, I have been taking up so much of your studio time because you are an unreliable sloth of a dope-fiend.”_

_My face twists to some humoring expression of curiosity—a cocked eyebrow giving consideration to the insult._

_“Two meters a minute, ja?” He snorts at his own joke, some double-music-entendre that might be amusing if I were as fucked up as him._

_I feel a bit of admiration in that he's nearly as arrogant as I am. Though, trying to admire esoteric behavior and narcissism is like trying to apply moral relativity to serial killers. Completely possible, but repugnant._

_I thrust my face an inch from his with perfectly measured airs of subdued outrage, open to hope for either intimidation or just a peek into how his mind works. I can't deny he holds a certain fascination. My concerned, golly-gee facade spits smoke at his ridiculously fucked up eyes, and I speak up like I'm with a slow-learning child._

_“Two strangely different stories. One of us must have it very wrong.”_

_“Says the trackmarks on your arms that could rail a train.” Despite whatever street-stew he's ingested, he's fluid; he doesn't miss a beat. With his mouth in some agape, arrogant grin, I can feel his breath on my face. I squeeze the small bag in my pocket, fingering the pills inside, and my nerves flare._

_Fashion-model gaunt, he licks his chapped, full lips, which no doubt hold a sharp tongue, and I can fully understand the appeal at this point, all pretentiousness aside. He sits up straight and finishes off the last gulp of his beer. I lick the front of my teeth and laugh, leaning down and nodding my head yes, but with the quirky pause of a question mark._

_“Says the creaking bedframe and Germanic screaming from Nick's room that could wake the dead.” Not wanting to get carried away in the rush, I vent some of the pent-up energy out by tapping ash onto his boots, smiling rotten-sweet all the while. “I hear you fuck like a five-hundred dollar whore. Or, that's what it sounds like, anyway.”_

_He's surprised, but his jaw's tilted confidently to the heavens and his eyes are gleaming with the same slow motion, whip-lash wit. He pulls himself together to sit however neatly a bag of bones and drugs can._

_It feels right, so I pull back and take another drag off my cigarette, grinning the whole time like we're friends having a laugh together. I've caught the bartender's attention, finally, and he walks over and stands in front of me as a way of silently telling me I can tell him what I want now._

_“Has someone been dreaming of me?” The jab at his manhood is apparently effective as rain on the ocean. Whether that's for a lack thereof or just the opposite, it's hard to tell. The open-mouthed smile slowly clenches to a Cheshire grin, and he grabs hold onto a raised knee with both hands, rocking side-to-side confidently._

_“Oh, I'm sure Nick calls your name out in his sleep every night—with those sweet platitudes he's always grunting.” As dry as the cigarette in my hand, I take one last, brief toke. With a sidelong glance around the bar, I toss it over my shoulder with a flick of my fingers. It's a busy night; full up with commotion and rowdiness too much to track entirely. Too much to notice two drug-thin guys bickering sarcastically. Seamlessly, I turn away from him to the bartender, “We'll have two more – thanks,” and then I'm right back in his face_

_He has to stop to think about this. Our eyes meet again and I sense that I've finally made contact._

_“But anyway, I guess you'd have to. Fuck like an expensive whore, that is. To keep Nick's attention and all?”_

_Rolling his eyes, shaking his head, it's obvious the only thing I'm accomplishing at this point is annoying him._

_“I don't think you can afford me, in this case. Perhaps you should quit loitering and find your usual cheap ones.”_

_Fucking relentless._

_The bartender slides the two beers in front of me and walks away to check in with Ms. 'I-wear-my-sunglasses-at-night'._

_“Oh. Okay.” I hand one bottle to Chris and raise the other, proposing a toast to our witty banter. “How 'bout you hop a train with me first?”_

__ nightclubs of the broken-hearted, stadiums of the damned  
legislature, perverted nature, doors that are rudely slammed  
you got your rabbit's foot, you got your good-luck charm  
but they can't help you none when there's trouble 

_Nick_  
“You're missing the turn.” I repeat myself for what must be the fifth time. Essentially, I'm inserting myself into a silent film, and no one's fucking listening or reacting. We're on some road where the street lights are becoming few and far apart, but I can still tell we're not headed toward the hospital.

“I don't know my way around here – I'm following her!” Lydia hisses back at me, pointing ahead at Gail's car with her hand still on the wheel.

“People who don't know how to drive aren't allowed to be backseat drivers.” Roark's riding shotgun and leaning over the back of his seat, keeping his eyes wide and alert like Chris and I are in the back of the paddy-wagon.

I'm around Chris's neck, my head on his shoulder, with Mufti in the seat next to me. The whole arrangement is uncomfortable and I'm trying not to look at anyone else. Chris's still holding a blood-soaked bar towel to his head, not hearing anything anyone has to say. I don't know if he's in shock or if he just doesn't want to talk. Roark's staring at him as though he might wither away into a pile of ash at any given moment.

“ _Wohin fahren wir?_ ” Chris says, looking toward the front of the car and gesturing at me to take the cigarette off of him at once. Part of me knows I'm being a pain in the ass to take the edge off whatever guilt I feel, but another part of me asserts that I can't force anyone else to listen to me.

Lydia clears her throat. Gail's turn signal flashes on in front of us, and she clicks hers on after.

“ _We're going,_ ” She says, somewhat snottily emphasizing the language change—maybe correcting him, or maybe trying to challenge him with English to keep him focused. Her voice melts right after from bitter to warm, friendly concern, so it's hard to tell. “Somewhere you can rest.”

He sighs lightly—unnoticeable almost if I weren't close enough to feel it—and looks out his window. The draft in the car has finally gotten to the insides of my nose, and, while it's painful, I can smell winter, traffic, and busy city air. My mind attempts to travel to the tall buildings, nightlife, streetlights, but it's all passing too fast.

Chris hasn't taken more than one toke off the cigarette and it's burned halfway down to the filter in his hand. Normally, he sucks through the first just so he can light the next one with it. He was doing the same before the show. It's obvious all his friends think this is my fault—especially with the looks Mufti keeps giving me—and I feel enough guilt that I'm starting to believe it is. I can't control or monitor everything he does, but am I so stupid I didn't see any red flags or warning signs?

I remember the coke, the mirror, groping him backstage, with the quiet argument of not here, not now. My mind pits that against last night's fight and all of bottles flying and breaking in my direction, dodging records and beers with a chair, and him biting and punching and screaming at me. I don't understand why I couldn't see it then, or what the fuck I was thinking.

The hair on my arms and legs stands on end considering all of this shit combined, and the whole of it is starting to hit me. Whatever vices Chris let loose in my head have crawled down my throat and lodged themselves to the walls like parasites, and at the same time I know it's better that I got out of there and copped a hit than to be junk-sick and useless to him. My mind feels like it's falling away in pieces. All the promises I made to myself about rationality are at this point as safe as pebbles on the roof of the car.

“How's your head?” Roark asks. Chris lowers the cloth and reveals the short, thick gash, a crescent above his brow, where he fell and hit the edge on one of the pipes. He says he can't remember it happening—he barely recalls being on stage—but he insists it could've been much worse. According to Roark, though, he and the rest of the audience thought Chris'd cracked his skull open. I don't know if he lost consciousness before or after hitting the floor, and, if he even remembers, he won't respond to any questions requiring more than a monosyllabic answer.

I take the towel from him and press it back to his forehead.

He acts burdened to have people concerned about his well-being, which I find both understandable and infuriating. I don't blame him for not answering, but how he leans away from Roark into the window, you'd think we were cruelly and unusually interrogating him.

“ _How's his head_ —his heart could've fucking stopped.” My mind has shut down into replay mode and I manage to think nothing but self-deprecating thoughts and the nightmare film-reel of walking away after hearing the crash and the gasps, until we roll to a stop at a traffic light and I realize where I am again. I can see light-blue words glaring _Gesundheitsklinik_ two blocks down. There's some red graffiti scrawled on the side of the building that I can't make out. “His head'd be fine if he used it.”

“Oh-fucking-kay, Nick.” Roark sneers at me, doing a bi-polar one-eighty from the friendly, concerned tone he addresses Chris with. “I'm just going by what happened. I am not a cardiologist.”

Mufti has spotted the clinic, also, and he nods affirmatively and leans into the armrest between the two seats up front. “I think we should go to the hospital.”

“S'what I've been saying, if anyone would fucking listen.” Really, I'm demanding, not suggesting, and I steer my head in proposal of the clinic down the block. I lick my thumb and forefinger and squeeze the end of Chris's cigarette, snuffing it out before he burns himself. Lydia's apparently not keen on the idea or has become hard of hearing, so I direct my conversation to Chris. “You might need stitches anyway.”

“I'm fine.”

“What about your back?” Mufti sounds dry and sure in a way that doesn't beg response, and he reaches past me to pluck the used cigarette from Chris's fingers and light it for himself. “It could get infected.”

“Why don't you give him your coat.” Roark suggests, gesturing at Chris's gauze get-up. I don't like the tone in his voice and I feel like everything I say is drifting uselessly into a void by vacuum—no one's listening, and if they are, they aren't hearing me. I'm in a nightmare.

“What?”

“The least you could do for your friend is care enough to see he doesn't go into hypothermia. Right?”

“That's why I want to go to the fucking ER.”

“Give him your coat and we won't have to go to the ER.” There's as much gentle persuasion in his voice as there is in mine on the matter of getting to the hospital. I feel guilty, and dwelling on how this all makes me feel worsens that in some vicious circle. Still not looking up from his window, Chris waves the suggestion away.

“I already... He doesn't _want it._ ”

“I don't think it fucking matters. It's snowing and he's wearing leather pants and bandaids.”

The body-language of everyone during the silence that follows accentuates the fact that Mufti is beyond uncomfortable with knowing that I've given Chris a lot more than my jacket before, and less than fond of me for it. Sensing Lydia wants to say something peace-making on the subject, I don't know what else to do with the moment but repeat myself.

“He doesn't want my fucking coat – _you're missing the turn!_ ”

“ _For the last fucking time, I'm following her!_ ”


	4. Past

_ **Part IV** _   


> _"A man's **past** is not simply a dead history... it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame." _  
> 
> 
>   
>  George Eliot  
>  

> 
>   
> 

__ I will carry it with me 'til I lie in my grave  
and my body won't rest 'til I bury my shame  
everyone has a secret, everyone has a past  
my one lonely secret is gonna be my last 

_ Roark _

  
I think I'm having heart palpitations. My breath is short, my pulse is racing, and I can't get enough air. I'm paying too much attention to my breathing and it's gone from an automatic instinct to something uncomfortably manual. I feel trapped. Gail's apartment is small, but it's properly furnished and not sleazy like our flat, so I don't think this is some fit of claustrophobia. The conversation is what's caging me in.

_“...know I shouldn't let it send me off the rails...projecting onto anybody else...just such a difficult person...”_

Hovering around the doorway to the kitchen isn't improving my condition at all. She and Mick are talking in low whispers at the table, since Nick and Chris are a stone's throw away in the living room. I can't hear what's being said. No matter how hard I concentrate, I only catch stray words and bits of sentences here and there. I try shutting my eyes, thinking I can hone my senses in on it, but I'm just worried about missing visual cues. I know it's about him—I can tell it's about him from the very fact that they're trying not to be heard.

 _“It is disturbing how those who are called by themselves his friends care so little that they know so little.”_ She says this loud and rather dryly, with her tongue pointed and starting to fork around all the Germanic flavoring on her words. Mick just stares at her from his one good, un-blackened eye, still as lost as me as to the purpose of their conversation. Comforting isn't the right word for it, but it's the first one that comes to mind.

 _“We've never been that close.”_ He comes back at her, defensive, and there's not a doubt in my mind who they're talking about.

I've invested so much into this. It's _not_ going to fall apart. Adaptation isn't an impossibility yet; I can still play this to my advantage.

Mufti's sitting next to her, staring a thousand yards through the wall with his eyes tearing up like he's bearing some sharp pain—like he's broken a bone and someone's poking and prodding at it. I know Mick's pissed off and he was ready to kill Nick once we all got situated inside, so it seems likely that Gail's spilling whatever information Chris entrusted her with to make peace. I wonder what version of events he told her, that she's now diluting even more telling Mick. But then again, the fact that this is exactly what I fear makes me want to dismiss it as paranoia. It could easily be something else they don't want to upset him or Nick with. They were whispering about him probably having a concussion before we got in the door.

And he obviously hit his head hard. It's difficult to tell if the nosebleeds are from whatever he's been snorting or the blunt-force trauma, but, even if I hadn't seen the accident firsthand, he just keeps repeating himself, slurring his words and asking the same questions—what happened with the gig, when we're going back to the flat. Normally, he doesn't let Nick even hug him in front of his bandmates; now, he's curled up on the couch in nothing but his leather trousers and some gauze, resting his head in Nick's lap and getting pet like a cat. Alex is sitting right beside them, obviously uncomfortable and trying his best not to look.

_“...didn't want to step on any toes...got out of control...”_

_“So you have walked completely around the problem.”_

The whole night is fucked. But I can make sure a bastard child will come from it. Lydia's abandoned me to help Mark console Anita outside, and I've been asked to leave the kitchen until Mufti, Gail and Mick finish their little chat, so my options remain among either direct action with Nick, or with Chris.

“...it's not like...”

“...are the only one responsible such that I am trusting of...”

Alex is staring at his hands, trying to invent something captivating to watch in the pores and lines of his skin. The kid has no idea what to do with himself; watching insects fuck would probably be more palatable than anything going on now. I don't really feel that drawn to say anything to him, but I can't help thinking he's too young to be caught in the midst of this. Most likely, he looks up to Chris, or looked up to him. Right now he's lying beside him in the fetal position, delirious and battered, resting in the embrace of his infamous 'secret' lover. This might be all well and fine, except this is the first time for most of them in witnessing it, without accidentally invading some poorly woven veil of privacy or hearing it through the walls. All this sudden publicness because of a head injury. But, you have to learn at some point not to make gods out of people.

Mufti comes walking briskly out of the kitchen. He fumbles through junk and clutter on the end-table beside Nick—apparently raising a defensive curtain of a blind spot so as not to see him or Chris—until he finds a lighter, and then he sprints out the front door. Everyone's attitude so far is that this is Nick's fault. Given the fact that all the affection is hidden and hushed, and that the negativity and fighting are all loud and obnoxiously in everybody's faces, it's not exactly an unfair assumption. All the steps taken to protect their relationship with secrecy have backfired beautifully. Whatever growing animosity there is for Nick among our company, though, Chris's oblivious.

It's not long before Alex gets sick of staring at his skin. He stands up, staring at Nick with his fists clenched, grinding his teeth like he wants to say something. He loses steam, though, and walks out after Mufti. Some disjointed conversation comes through the door before it slams shut again. Lydia's saying something about 'loyalty'.

Nick sighs, loud and obviously aware of all the shit being spoken about him. Too annoyed and miserable to stay at Chris's side, he slips out from under him and makes for the hallway left of the kitchen.

“I'll sit with him for you, if you want.” I call out, stopping Nick before he turns into the bathroom. He relaxes a little, scowling and clenching his fists a bit less knowing there's still me in his corner, but he shakes his head.

“I'm just gonna...” He scratches his arm, making a grateful gesture out of pointing at the doorway. “I'll be right back.”

“You sure?”

He waves dismissively, then disappears into the bathroom to make what use he can of the crumbs leftover from his business exchange back at the bar. Nonetheless, I sit down next to Chris.

He's already in fight-or-flight mode. He tenses up instantly and slides down to the armrest to get away from me, sitting with his knees pulled to his chest. There are these dramatic circles under his eyes that make him look ill and exhausted—on the brink of going mad from sleep deprivation. Wary of my eyes on him, he bites his lip and locks his eyes to stare dead at the floor.

“That was a nasty fall you took.” I say, smiling. He turns his head away, resting the side of his face on his knees. His fingers are turning white where they grip either of his pantlegs. A heated connection sparks my mind—I'm hit by the physical memory of my white knuckles holding onto either of his naked legs. “Been drinking a lot lately?”

He doesn't say anything. The silence's just filled with more stray talk from the kitchen.

“That never seems to work out well for you, does it?”

Still nothing.

“Well, when you're feeling better...” I slide to the middle of the couch, reaching to touch him on the thigh. The humiliation cutting through him is palpable. We both know I've seen every bit of him—I've _had_ him. And he may as well be naked because in this humiliation I _still_ have him. “I think it'd be best if you told Nick now that you're flattered but you're not well enough to accept that offer to do the tour. Don't bother yourself about the rest – there are more... equipped people to fill the spot.”

My hand smooths up, fingers brushing out enough to curl around the inside of his thigh. He pushes it away, shaking and continuing to cave in on himself until he's tucked into a ball. I start to stroke his leg instead and he turns to face me, abrupt and aggressive.

“ _Stay away from me._ ” The way this breaks his silence, the timing and delivery pausing between his words, has a subtle hint of threat to it that makes the whole fetal-position shit seem less like weakness and more like the temporary disorientation of a boxer in the corner after the bell rings, if not a guise. It's surprising and irritating – I was starting to assume all of this had worn him down to a little nub. Now I can't tell if he's afraid of me or afraid of what he might do to me. I can still cross my fingers for the building animosity. If they didn't already, all of his friends fucking hate Nick now.

Before I can say anything back, the open-and-shut of a door echoes from the hall and Nick's coming around the corner.

I scoot out of the way and he sits between us. One of his arms goes around Chris and he leans in close to whisper something. Chris freezes, unresponsive for a moment, then shakes his head. Nick shrugs, with that I'm-only-trying-to-help sort of dejected nuance. He goes in for a kiss, but Chris turns away and he gets his cheek instead. It's still annoying to watch, anyway. Chris throws Nick's arm off of him and stands up, only to nearly fall again in a visible wave of dizziness.

“What the fuck?” Nick's incredulous at the outburst, yet stubbornly concerned all the same. He jumps to his feet; offers his hand. He's ignored, though, and Chris wanders off to the bathroom now—stumbling a bit, leaning against the wall for support on and off on the way.

“Hey,” I say once I hear the door shut, and I slap Nick socially on the arm with the back of my hand. I'm almost pleased enough by Chris leaving for my anxiety to dull – from hanging over the edge of a panic attack to straddling it. “You believe this bullshit?”

He looks at me, confused and very obviously stoned. If it weren't for the buzz, I guess that he'd probably be crying or something in the confusion and frustration of being rejected by both Chris and all of his friends.

“Everybody acting like this is all your fault or something. Like you're in charge of what goes up his nose?”

He nods, blowing his eyes wide and directing me to look over his shoulder with the line of his gaze at the culprits in the kitchen and outside, so as to name their insanity in secrecy, as though we're being surveilled. He gravitates closer to me, convinced we're the only sane ones here.

“ _Granted_ , you might be in charge of what goes up certain other orifices, nobody told him to start speedballing and stop eating.”

“It makes _no fucking sense_. They saw me fighting with him last night because I wanted him to _stop_... It's not like... I mean, yeah, I let him shoot up with me this morning, and I feel like shit about that, but it was so I could cut pieces of glass out of his fucking back. If Mick thinks I was gone because I didn't _have_ any left, why would I—”

“Yeah, I know. And 'the hell is he saying to Gail in there?” It's hard enough spinning my concerns around to reflect something he'll empathize with, but he just shakes his head in response, staring at the floor like he can only imagine. Big fucking help. This is going to require more effort than I anticipated.

“I'm the last goddamn person that wanted this to happen. Fucking Mufti acts like I hit him in the head with the pipe. And now _he's_ mad at me... Again. I mean, I don't know what he wants from me! We've been having problems since... The way he acts... He's been distant and fucking _cold_ to me.”

I feel this stab of anxiety and I don't understand why. My chest is heavy all over again, and there's a foreboding loss of emotional control under my chummy surface. I'm the only one here sympathizing with him, and he's not going to fucking listen to me because of this cunt throwing a fit. I almost regret antagonizing him about the band.

“Well, I wouldn't put it past you if had been wielding the pipe. And I'm sorry Mick threw my name in there like that—I didn't say dick. I mean, you should really tell him to mind his own goddamn business again, 'cause it doesn't seem like it sunk in the first time.” I put particular emphasis on Mick's name for good measure. It sounded effective in my head, but now I'm wondering if I might come off as too keen to get him to focus on the conversation in the next room. “I mean, it's not like Chris's particularly heavy. It didn't bloody _require_ more than one person to carry him—he's just pissed he's fucking OCD and insisted on cleaning the goddamn flat on his own. I dunno how you were supposed to help with the shakes and sweats.”

“ _'Lost his fucking mind!_ It's like he's a different person since it happened. He doesn't even seem to care about anybody knowing about us anymore after _all_ the damn _sneaking around_ he's made us... But if I—if I want to be with him, if I even fucking touch him for any reason other than comforting him when he fucking mopes around all day, he _flips his shit like this!_ ” Nick bangs out the last clause with a shout, gesturing at the hallway as if to somehow aid Chris in hearing this jab over the running water via visual cues. He sighs, taking his head into his hands. If my various social masks have become at all depleted, he's too fucked up to notice. Too far up Chris's ass to notice anything else—still, after all of this. He turns to me, forcing our wide-eye contact once again that testifies to everyone around us being lunatics. Like I'm supposed to be engaged with his problems with Chris. “And he _never_ wants to be alone. But I'm not allowed to fucking touch him, _not allowed to talk about what he fucking did to me._ ”

“You ever think...” Right. _Fine._ If we're going to _'fucking'_ talk about _'fucking'_ Chris, then let's fucking talk. “Well, I mean, I dunno. It's none of my business.”

“Think what?”

“It could be an affair? I don't know what I'm talking about, but it's weird, y'know?”

He stops for a moment, staring at the floor and wrinkling his forehead in thought. He shakes his head, opens his mouth to speak, but then shuts it again.

“I mean, he does—he acts really weird. You said you guys haven't even fucked since he screwed this other guy?”

“No, Roark... No. You,” Stammering, he's tripping up his words on the growing impatience in his voice—apparently unable to keep pace with the rising tempo of disgust. “You're right – you _don't_ know what you're talking about. You _really_ don't know what you're talking about.”

“I'm sorry, mate. It was stupid to say.” Without meaning any of it, my speech is sprinkled with honest sounding, sad admittance of my wrong-doings. I'm straining my face into something hurt and miserable for effect, but I'm guessing he's heard enough from everyone and anyone for the night because he gets up and starts to walk away.

“Just keep the fuck out of my business.” He's upset, obviously, but it seems he's overplaying it so everyone else can hear him—like it's not really even directed at me—so I'm not going to worry over it.

I plant my hands at either side of me, raising myself up in the air a few inches over the couch to see him strut angrily toward the bathroom after Chris.

“I was only trying to help.” I call out.

The door slams.

There's nobody left but me, so there's no point left in being coy about it. I get up from the couch and sneak over by the doorway to the kitchen. I can just see the end of the table around the wall—Mick's got his arms folded and he's staring very solemnly at the table, looking like he's brooding over a weighty decision.

No one says anything for what could be anywhere from an hour to a minute. Then, he stares down past the table, maybe looking at his feet or a hundred miles into the earth's crust, and shifts his weight in his seat.

“When exactly did all of this happen?” He asks finally, perhaps having been thinking over how best to put himself and the score he has to settle with Nick aside, so as to prod the subject at hand with the gentleness it demands. I'm holding my breath as both a nervous reaction and an attempt not to be heard. Without moving, he glances up, ready to give Gail's answer his full attention.

“As I said, he was drunk when we spoke—very upset because of Nick.” She answers in explanation for her lack of an answer. “It was hard to understand him, but I don't think it could have been longer than a week or two ago.”

I'm starting to feel dizzy, sick to my stomach, and I let my breath out carefully. Fucking _shit_. Shit. Fuck. I already knew, but, _shit_. It takes all my restraint to take the next lungful in without panting. Mick takes his head in his hands, dragging them up and down his face—being careful of his freshly bruised left eye—then drops his arms to his sides and leans back in the chair.

“I guess you couldn't have misheard him?” He says this fatally, rhetorically almost, in obvious expectation of the answer. She must shake her head or something, because he leans forward and folds his arms over the table, staring like he's just lost thousands of dollars on one poker hand.

“But it's not our place to say anything to Nick. It isn't my place to be speaking of this, you understand? I would not have—I would not betray his trust—if it was not serious. He needs for someone to be looking out for him. This is why I wanted him here, but he won't want to stay long. Mark wouldn't know what to do if he knew; Mufti cares very dearly for him, and he is over there enough to keep an eye out, but he isn't good with confrontation – isn't responsible the way you are. And Chris is getting... He is worsening, spiraling out of control. He's...”

“Yeah, he's crossing the rubicon.” Mick cuts her short, rapid-blinking the drowsiness from his eyes and rubbing his five o'clock shadow with the impatience of one just finding out about a mass of material they've missed out on, and then weighing that against the time they've got left to catch up. He leans forward on his elbows, lacing his fingers together. “You don't need to explain that to me. I've seen it—I see it. I doubt anyone needs that explained to them after tonight—except Nick, maybe. I get what you're saying. And, yeah, I mean... I get it. It's for him to tell whoever else, I don't have any argument on that. Y'know, if all this's true, of course I'll look out for him, but I do wanna talk with him.”

There's this feeling of doom or regret, of realizing the irriversible weight of a decision or an action and the resultant ruination, the complete _fuckedness_ , that's come as a consequence. There's no eraser, no refund, no reset button. I'm frozen to the spot, with nothing giving way but the burning rise of a lump in my throat.

“If?”

__ I cried from the bruises, learned to live with the scars  
now you live in the mirror - when I look, there you are  
you're the shadow on the faces of the people I meet  
have you claimed eternal shotgun in my passenger seat? 

_ Nick _

  
Chris's sunk into the bath up to his mouth, and only his scraped knees and half of his head stick out. The surface of the water is covered by white foam like pond scum. With his big eyes, pointed ears, sunken face, and the steam rising up in a haze around him, I think he could be a Siren. He looks very pale and thin, though. Too weak to lure anyone to drowning. There's a sluggishness in the way he moves that I can't tell apart from being half-asleep or disoriented. But I guess appearance is the whole point of the deadly part.

I don't know how long I've been staring, but the mirror's fogged up and I have to wipe out a wet, clear spot with my hand. I still can't see enough to finish shaving so I just cut through what stubble I can by feel alone on my neck, and then wash the rest of the shaving cream off. I'm playing a cassette of guitar tracks he recorded a few weeks back on Gail's stereo—one that I borrowed so many times until he finally just decided to give it to me to keep. It still gives me chills and warms my face at the same time. There's this deep booming in the bass noises that fills up my chest and makes me feel I'm drowning in it.

I think it's brilliant, in the true sense of the word: brightness to the point of blinding. The sliding trill of strings sounds underwater and cavernous now, and I think of ocean ambiance hearing it in this setting. I can see the crisscrossing, watery lines of white light reflecting on the ocean floor or the walls of some grotto. It makes me want to write the words that it deserves.

He turns onto his side and his hip sticks out of the water, bone-white and curving like there's little else than a film of skin over the bone. I can see the mosaic of cuts and bruises on his back now, and I don't think he's being modest or self-conscious about me playing the tape, so much as he's too occupied by feeling ill to do much of anything. If he's even still awake.

“It smells like a gin mill in here.” I feel like a hypocrite and an asshole and a bad person. We're finally alone and I want to say something, but I can't think of what. I don't know how to apologize, or what for. I'm drying my face off in a wash cloth, walking over to the tub, and there's an empty vodka bottle on the floor hidden between the counter and the toilet. My worry has just multiplied tenfold.

“Did you just finish this now?” I'm holding the bottle up – it's made of clear plastic, by some German brand I don't recognize. I feel apologetic and jealous, and the combined self-pitying makes me kind of sick with myself. All the bullshit and the blaming that I thought I could let slide off me is turning out to be more like a tick burrowing under my skin, into my bloodstream. All my anger is growing with the number of reasons for concern. He looks at me over his shoulder, then turns around to face me. I hate that I busted his lip.

All the angles in the skeleton that are usually hidden by tissue and skin have become pronounced in any and all parts of his body. I reach back to my worst experiences with withdrawal to try and imagine I know how he feels, but whatever he's done to himself is something much different and worse than what I've been through. His lips are flushed red and the gash on his forehead's dried to a dark brownish color – both of which make him seem even more pale. The color in his skin is barely brought out even against the soapy white water, and he looks tired. Very, very tired.

“There was not that much left.” He's not trying to whisper, I don't think; it's just coming out that way. He tries to shrug, but barely succeeds at moving at all, looking more like he could drift off to sleep at any moment.

Unsure of where to begin to respond, I just toss the bottle in the trash. It doesn't seem worth it to make an argument of it, but I'm consumed by a dull anger. An insecure melancholy of sorts now—disappointment, embarrassment.

“I think I saw a coffee house down the block. Just throw something on whenever you get out...” I try to start off suggesting or persuading, but I have to put my foot down and it falls apart into a command anyway, like I'm just letting him know where I'm going to take him to be nice—not that it matters if he doesn't want to go.

Which, at this point, it doesn't.

He moves his head up from the water, looking in my direction out of the corner of his eye. Half his mouth is submerged and he's holding himself with his arms crossed over his stomach.

“I am not hungry.”

“Yeah, I know, but... you have to eat.”

He scowls in such a way as to tell me I won't be graced with a response. It's slow and lacking in the threat of follow-through due to this off-balance daze he's drunk himself into.

I think he might be at the circling point where he's too sick for food—where he's gotten used to running on nothing but pills and powder, and his body's adapted to it likewise. After so long, the appetite just gives up and leaves it to the rest of the body to be strong. Everything follows suit after that; _I can't go on, you guys will have to make it without me_ , first a healthy trait, then a function, then an organ, giving in one by one.

I kneel down at the side of the bath and reach into the water, grabbing hold of one of his ankles. I didn't expect it to be this hot and it burns at first, and then numbs to a sort of sensitive, pins and needles sizzling.

He sighs—just a rise and fall of bones—but doesn't bother moving otherwise.

“You're standing on my bandages...”

I look under my feet and there's the red, stained-stiff gauze in a snakeskin heap.

I pull his foot out from the water and hold it with both hands, resting it on the edge of the tub in a straight line from his knee.

“S'not any good anymore; doesn't matter.” I'm rubbing my thumbs up and down against the bottom of his foot.

I take his other foot from the water and start rubbing that, and he floats into the corner of the tub to make the stretch, lying stomach-up now. I can tell that he isn't going to close his eyes and relax anytime soon without significantly larger quantities of alcohol, and it's putting me on edge. The lines in his face map out some uncertainty, a question of my motivations.

“Y'want me to, um... look at your back?” I'm still angry with him and it takes effort to hide it. It comes from a positive place, though—whatever rage I feel wouldn't exist without the love I have for him. I let his feet go and wash my hands off in the bathwater.

He stares at the wall in silence. Both of us are struggling to forget about the junkyard heap our relationship currently topples on—watching instead to avoid whatever else could fall and knock us over the edge. But still, the reek of everything else, of all the shit we've already accumulated, gets harder to ignore every time we open our mouths.

“Okay.” He says finally, and he floats over onto his stomach. The water sinks all view of his back, and his shoulders and backside stick out instead like bony white islands. I'm having a difficult time not admiring this display, but then he arches, flexing all the skeletal and muscular structure in his shoulders visibly, like it's all covered by one thin film of skin, and the shredded whipping post that is his back rises into sight.

 _You said you guys haven't even fucked since he screwed this other guy?_ Fuck Roark. I stare for a long time, until he sits upright, still with his back to me, and sinks the half of his body that's inspired such dumb silence back into the murk. He's getting uncomfortable, probably not knowing whether to get worried or pissed off at me.

“Is it that bad?” He asks, honestly and innocently, trying to see me over his shoulder. The total ignorance for the reason behind my silence in his voice—all worry and anxiousness—has made it real in my mind now exactly how hard the blow to his head must've been.

“Yeah. Well, I mean... it's not as bad as it was.” I reach into the water to run my hand over the chaotic mess of gashes on his lower back. The scabbed skin's been soaking so long it feels soft, but, apart from the deeper cuts, some of it's still healing raised and jagged. It's certainly stopped bleeding, but, even so, the upper half of his back's become one large welt. It's yellowed in the center, turning pink, purple, and then blue the further out it spreads like some circular rainbow, but with the red dots and dashes sprinkled all throughout. I stroke lower, down to the end of his tailbone, where the cuts and bruising stop and something else begins.

“It still hurts.” He says, either not wanting to comment on where my hands or going, or not noticing. The former seems more likely. He coughs, and it comes out stifled and restrained, trying to stop his body from seizing up and aggravating the injuries.

I wish I had something poignant and consoling to say to him. Part of me is actually hoping it's the injury that's making him act this way. The idea of seducing him in this state crosses my mind, and I feel like a pig for the thrilling warmth it sends up my back, to my face, and back down to my groin.

My hand brushes a little lower, and he shivers. I love this oblivious innocence, and I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm not pleased he's hurt himself, but another ugly option keeps barging in on my thoughts— _It could be an affair?_ —and it makes me want to focus on this fantasy all the more. He's still not saying anything about my wandering hands and I'm starting to foam at the mouth with dozens of insecure questions. It sounds awful, and it is awful, but I don't want it be that he's so utterly disassociated the thought of sex from me that it wouldn't even cross his mind as a possibility for his naked body to inspire my silence, so much that I'm relieved thinking about the disorientation.

Fooling myself keeps getting more difficult, though. I've already tried with him so many times; I'm not going to keep at it only to be met with rejection after rejection. Everybody's fucking voice is in my head now, and I can't forget there are so many more important things, so many hurtful things at hand.

“I guess I wanna... I don't really know what I want. I'd like to understand why you're doing this.”

He turns around to sit up, folding his legs and rising out from the soapy foam, burned a few shades more pink than the rest of his skin. I can still see the scratches that stretch back along the sides of his ribs and I'm treading water in a mental fit between the grudge I'm holding and how much I care about him. There's the weird flurry of cuts in a rectangle along his upper thigh that I still don't remember where it came from. His breathing has gone very shallow and he looks ashamed. It's hard trying to keep mad at someone that's so obviously ill.

“Was I am doing what?” He retreats and holds himself around his knees, not prepared to make eye contact until I explain myself. I can feel my heart pulsing in my temples, almost in sync with the tape still playing.

“...You mean 'why'?”

He shakes his head in that you-know-what-the-fuck-I-mean way of his. Then he sinks into the water and I pull the drain. I have to wonder, is this the same person I fell in love with less than a year ago? Is it possible that I don't know him as well as I thought? That I don't know what he's really capable of? Has he been that good at hiding just how deep his addictions run, or is this excessive, self-destructive behavior of drowning himself in substance what happens when he gets depressed?

“I mean – forget all the shit between us for right now. You fainted and almost killed yourself on a steel pipe. And you're still drinking. All this fucking week – I don't understand the way you're acting... why you're doing this shit to yourself. I don't feel like I know you anymore.” The words come out involuntarily, like a twitch, or a kick after being hit on the knee. And then it's just verbal diarrhea. It's a mental or emotional leak from my mouth that I can't plug, and everything's pouring out. “I know I've been a dick and I've made it out like this's been about me and—and I don't know if there is an us, and I don't know what to call it anymore other than a friendship, but I know I've been focused on myself—”

“Why would you say that? _Why_ — You don't...” I don't know what I've said, but apparently, I've upset him, and as quick as he snaps at me, he stops short in some fit of inebriated hysterics, unable to find the right English words.

“What?”

“I've ruined—” Finally looking up at me, tears are starting to brim his eyes and he hides his face to wipe them into obscurity with the bathwater.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“ _I've fucked everything up._ ” He's choking, hanging his head. Somewhere in here was the straw that broke the camel's back, but I don't know what it was or what's even going on now. It's such a sudden, violent burst of emotion, I'm dumbstruck.

“ _Just_ —stop. Just calm down for a second. Time out.” I reach to grab him by the shoulders, but he leans back against the wall out of my reach. The water is down to his waist now. “Chris, _calm down_.”

He's tuning me out, mumbling and repeating something to himself in German. A sob breaks out. Then another, and another, each coming more rapid than the one before until he's bawling and hugging himself.

“What did I do now? I'm expressing fucking _concern_ for you – What is _this shit_ you keep pulling with me?” I scream at him. My patience has officially worn out—that well is fucking dry. I hit the water to avoid hitting him, splattering it up the wall and over the edge of the tub. I stand up, turn around on my heels, and knock various bottles and toiletries off the counter with another frustrated swipe of my hand.

Putting both hands over his mouth, he tries to stifle himself, holding his breath to suppress the involuntary shudders and sobs. His eyes are red and streaming tears, and he starts shaking his head, almost offering his silence as an apology in exchange for me to stay.

“You're more _fucking mental_ than I thought you were if you think I'm gonna stick around for this _bullshit_.” I yell, and I'm out of there and slamming the door behind me before I can see his reaction.  


_ the boy looked at Johnny, Johnny wanted to run,  
but the movie kept moving as planned _

_ Roark  _

  
_The paranoia's set in. I think the bartender's noticed I've got the beer planted between my legs, but then again I also think I'm over-analyzing everything around me just because I'm nervous. Either way, he's taking too long in the bathroom and sweat's starting to dampen my scalp. I could sit here and contemplate how exactly it is that I've reached this point—what scraps of emotional filth, desperation, jealousy that I planted that this thing festering inside of me could have sprouted from—but there's no point. There's no turning back._

_I don't know if the one dose is enough, but he'll be back any second and I've only got one hand to work with inside my jacket-pocket, inside the plastic bag, struggling to detach either ends of the capsule with my thumb and forefinger. I don't understand why the first one was so much easier to pull apart, but it finally comes loose and I panic; one end of the pill casing slips from my fingers and I'm worried the contents have all spilled into my pocket. I manage to bring the other half out, still concealed in my fist, and relief comes in a sweat-soaked wave when I open my hand to see most of the powder's still inside._

_Glancing over my shoulder, I notice there's a light-haired man in a booth across from the bar staring at me. He's older and not completely unfortunate-looking, but not in such a way that it'd be a wonder he's sitting alone. Although, he probably still has a few years left before the mid-life crisis hits—not quite yet straddling the brink of buying a Cadillac. I hear the roar of flushing toilets as the restroom door opens, and I quickly dump the powder into the bottle, hide the casing in my pocket, and slide the beer back onto the bar in front of his stool. I'll have to deal with this bloke later._

_Chris walks behind, then around me, and takes his seat, smiling. Elbows on the bar, he plants his face in his hands and slouches, turning only his head to face me. In one adrenaline-charged moment that goes on for an eternity, I mistake the smile and the body language as him knowing of what I've done, and I'm a deer in headlights. But I say nothing to betray myself and the moment passes._

_“So, what is it from me you want?” Really, he's either trying to look unperturbed and sociable or at ease in our little confrontation. He's already remarkably intoxicated, however, and it just comes off as drunk courage._

_“Seems we're both reasonably clever guys. How 'bout we be honest with one another?” I'm making an effort for enthusiasm, but my voice still ends up somewhere between weather-forecasting and proposing a novel idea at a board-meeting. I don't know what I was expecting, but I didn't consider what I'd do in the case of accidental witnesses._

_His body's reaction time has been dulled a considerable amount throughout the evening—it takes a second for the rhetoric to hit him, and then another for it to actually register._

_“I don't have problems with you. What is going on with Nick and you, in the band, I don't know a lot about it. I'm really not... I don't, or haven't made, any say for any of it.” The English is not only awkward, but he's slow-motion speaking, bordering on slurring. We're probably two drinks away from, 'I'm ossifer, sober.' The smirking and the confidence don't leave him for a second, though, even while he faces this impressive failure to remember any words of more than two syllables._

_“Yeah.” I give a dry laugh, take a sip of beer, hoping to get some 'monkey see, monkey do' going. It's a waiting game now. “So, how'd you do it then?”_

_“What?”_

_“How'd you get him into bed?”_

_“I'm confused.” He stares at me, dumbfounded. “That's not... It didn't happen that way.”_

_“You must be pissed stupid to expect me to believe it was his idea.”_

_“Are you saying about asking me to play guitar or to have sex with me?” He knocks back a gulp from the beer. The rush has been beyond anything I've ever felt. My underarms, behind my knees, my scalp, my neck, my back—they're all pooling sweat. I take a quick look across the bar again and the guy is still staring.I should probably get us the fuck out of here soon and fast._

_“'Bit of both.”_

_“I am having nothing to do with decisions by the band, and my seeing Nick is nothing to do with it. I admire your—”_

_“_ Different _question.”_

_He opens his mouth to say something, but Gail's walking up with a red-headed girl glammed out like Bowie hanging on her arm, and he straightens his slouching posture to thrust a hand in the air and wave to her._

_“Hallo Roark!” She says, and she winks at Chris, placing a set of keys down in front of him. The girl at her side giggles at something, or at nothing, or at their shared drunken giddiness and apparently uncontrollable instinct to laugh. “We're going over to her place – would you mind taking the car back?”_

_“Ja – kein Problem.” He smiles back knowingly and nods his head. They both walk away, and she blows him a flamboynat kiss over her shoulder before they disappear out the door. Taking the keys into his lap, he turns to me, looking down and starting to smile at the uncomfortable nature of our conversation. “My seeing Nick has nothing to do with you. Why are you interested?”_

_“I'm pretty sure you_ seeing _Nick has everything to do with it and more.”_


	5. Whore

_ **Part V** _   


> _“He felt at once betrayed and betrayer, deceived and deceiver. He was a criminal forced into crime, an unwilling **whore**.”_  
> 
> 
>   
>  Peter Benchley  
>  

> 
>   
> 

__ gave up trying to figure it out, my head got lost along the way  
worn out from giving it up, my soul, I pissed it all away  
still stings, these shattered nerves, pigs we get what pigs deserve  
I'm going all the way down, I'm leaving today  
come, come, come on, you've gotta fill me up, gotta let me inside of you  
you've gotta fix me up, come, come, gotta let me get through to you  
still feel it all slipping away but it doesn't matter anymore  
everybody's still slipping away but it doesn't matter anymore  
look through these blackened eyes, you'll see ten thousand lies  
my lips may promise but my heart is a whore 

_ Nick _

  
“He's lucky if I don't break his fucking face in thirty-goddamn- _thousand pieces_.” Putting the lid on my emotions has become like trying to zipper up a suitcase with a fully grown, pissed off crocodile in it. It won't fit and it's likely to kill me if I keep trying to make it stay inside. “I can't _do_ this shit anymore!”

When will he realize that it isn't his infidelity I can't bear, but his cowardice? Truth isn't an easy mistress; all omissions are betrayals.

In the chaos of riding the rage out, of trying to bottle it up, I'm only wreaking mindless destruction on whatever's in proximity. I've knocked over a lamp and cleared off one of Gail's shelves now, and she stares at me menacingly from the kitchen table. The scene of the living room looks like the beginnings of a home invasion or a robbery. Roark's leaning beside the door with his back to a window, rain pattering on the glass behind him, crossing his arms, transfixed with some palpable anxiety like he doesn't want to get caught in the middle of any of this.

“'Break his fucking face', after he has passes out and has a _concussion_. What a real big man you must feel like.” Mick barks back, advancing toward me. I'm pacing, trying to vent out the frustration into physical action, but his voice and everything he says is like nails on a chalkboard—done purposefully and spitefully, while my ears are open and my arms are tied. He strides up into my face, blocking me from walking any closer to the door. I try to turn around, but he's following me, obviously ready to start more _shit_ for the sake of starting it, and he's right back in front of me. He points down the hallway like he's charging me with the fault of whatever's gone wrong in my relationship. “What the fuck did you do to him?”

More and more, Roark cringes and gives me a look of friendly warning, tilting his head back and gesturing with his eyes in suggestion that we leave. Now, if possible. I don't see why not.

I'm done with being patient. I'm done with choking back this rancid jealousy in my throat and gut in the name of sensitivity. I'm not staying by the side of someone who doesn't fucking appreciate me until I'm ready to walk out—who has so many fucking mood swings and self-destructive mechanisms, it's like having a romance with a hoard of split personalities. Someone who doesn't care about me enough to be honest in the beginning about his attractions and relationships, his addictions—to not fuck around behind my back with other men he claims he's got limited to no interest in outside of me.

I feel so _fucking stupid._

“I didn't touch him!” I yell, unbelieving of such a stupid accusation and leaning my whole body forward into Mick to get him to step the fuck back. He holds his ground and just moves that much closer into me, until I'm screaming in his face. “ _He's a fucking alcoholic cokehead!_ I pull the glass out of his back with my goddamned hands, hold him in the fucking shower—”

“He told Gail you _ripped the hair off his scalp_ and bashed him against a _metal post_ , you stupid _cunt!_ You're trying to sound pious?” The glare that accompanies this rant challenges me to redeem myself in his eyes—to provide some excuse, or suffer judgment—and Gail backs it up in a kind of tag-team harmony from where she sits. “I mean, _Christ!_ This could've been his second concussion, and then he'd be _dead._ ”

These are the souvenirs I'm left with from this relationship. Shame. Embarrassment. Being pushed to the point of actions where I don't know who I am anymore after.

“I forgot, you're the holy authority on confrontation. You and Mark only knocked him to the floor and sliced his back to fucking ground-meat.” What a huge fucking mistake—what a huge fucking _fool_ I've been. What a fucking waste of time, _waste of my life_ , that I've put myself through, up and moving to Germany to be near him. “And, Gail, why don't you keep your fucking mouth shut about other people's problems?”

“I don't make it my business to be involved in the problems of others unless I have good reason. If I think they're in danger.” Gail sneers at me, suggesting a whole list of these 'good reasons', but stopping short at the appropriate first.

Mick takes a step back and turns away from me, clutching at invisible straws in the air. He heaves his whole chest in a sigh, and then spins back around, nodding his head in ironic affirmation.

“Yeah, I forgot about that, where I _stopped him from stabbing you._ ”

I've reached out, like so many times before, second-guessing my judgments of this person, letting him force-feed me doubt in my own perceptions, convictions, gut-feelings—anything to the contrary of the facade he's created for me to believe in, only to be humiliated in that belief time and again. To have this shit shoved in my face, not only that he's failed me, but I've fucking failed myself making excuses for him. Putting up with him. _Coping_ with him.

“I've been trying to be goddamn _nice_ to him! He _literally_ tries to _cut my heart out_ , and I'm walking on eggshells all day trying to be _goddamned nice to him!_ And you're giving me shit 'cause I pulled some hair out of his head to get him to leave me alone?” I take another swipe at some junk on the table beside the couch—a bong falls and cracks on the floor, along with a set of keys and a small platter of loose change, which spins and rings, accelerating, before collapsing with a final sounding, echoed reverberation.

“Bullshit! Your day rises and falls around the needle in your arm—if they're fucking _lucky_ , everyone else comes after that. You could give a fuck about him or anyone else.” All of this sudden aggression and concern he's putting forward for Chris, like he has some kind of paternal or protective role, doesn't add up. He's never aloof toward my problems, but impartiality is a fucking innate characteristic with him if something doesn't directly involve him or his high morals. It's like he's taking sides to screw with me—to get back at me for punching him—and someone carrying out a vendetta is the last goddamn thing I need.

“You know, Mick, this choppy performance of pretending to give a shit is compelling, truly, but I thought you were the one who couldn't be arsed to care about Chris or I or anyone else when you have a _'real relationship'_ to worry about? I thought you and fucking everybody'd be singing and dancing for me to get away from him. You wanna talk about false piety, I'd take a guess—”

“He's ill and needs your _help!_ I guess it makes you feel like a man picking on someone that's sickly and emaciated, Nick?—”

“— _I'd take a guess_ this is'all about the shiner I gave you. I mean, _what the fuck?_ Who was it that was just complaining what an inconvenient chore it created for him that Chris 'passed out and had a concussion'?”

“—Picking a fight with someone who's incapable of walking from the car to the fucking front door by himself? Fucking try it _with me!_ ”

“I already did, you stupid jackass.”

“I was fucking _calm_ two hours ago when you took a cheap shot at me like an _ape_ instead of articulating yourself. You _don't_ want to be inviting me to violence right now.”

I mill around the room, as if I can leave my guilt behind me. But it tracks me as I walk, an ugly shadow in a fool’s paradise.

“If you've got such a hard-on for him, you can go hold his hand for a pulse while he drowns himself in substance. I'm sure you'll be repaid for your efforts—he's apparently fucking everybody but me.”

“ _Don't_ fucking push my buttons, Nick. You're really the one to be passing judgment on others for drug abuse and infidelity, right? You're a piece of work.”

My stomach is sinking. I think I'm going to be sick. I travel back in time, a nemesis against which I have a single ally, memory, and even it betrays me as my thoughts migrate to a reality before our passion withered and routine blossomed, falling back into what I know for certain—the truisms that I cling to in order to not go mad—but I can’t stop myself as my imagination fabricates a feasible take on the series of events that took place in my absence. My mind floats like ash. The truth of it is, I blame myself most cruelly.

“Not any worse than him. Not any worse than you.”

“If it was me, at least he'd know I'd never _strangle_ him.”

I've stretched my patience beyond its means. I have all but exhausted whatever shreds of good nature and faith that still reside within me. I look to Gail, then back to him. I was willing—perhaps emotionally inclined—to put suspicion aside, a favorable judgment in the absence of any evidence to the contrary. But the emotions rising in me have reached the top—they're expanding and there's no place left for them to fill. The pressure is building, and like steam knocking the lid off a pot on the stove, I'm picking up the ashtray off the table and flinging it across the room. It shatters on the wall, messing cigarette butts and ash down onto the carpet, and Roark practically jumps in front of the door.

“ _Was it you?_ Is that what all this _shit_ is about?”

The surprise on Mick's face reads sincere, but somehow that only intensifies the urge to further indulge this cluster-fuck of treacherous thoughts as paranoia takes hold of me. I find myself wondering if this sudden, explosive outburst was less of a vendetta and more of an uncontrollable lapse in judgment on his part. The shock takes him hostage and he's dumbstruck, finally allowing out only a single utterance: “ _What?_ ”

“I said, _are you fucking him?—_ ”

“—I heard what you said. What—what kind a fucking question _is that?_ What the hell is _wrong with you?_ ”

“ _Are you fucking him?!_ ”

“ _Don't ask me that bullshit!_ There is something _seriously fucking sick_ inside your head!”

“Answer me! _Are you fucking him?!_ ”

“First of all, you have no fucking sensitivity for him at all. Second, you're out of your mind – _out of your fucking mind_. Not everyone is like you, Nick. Not everyone secretly wants to up and leave their girlfriend to go to Berlin and start screwing men when opportunity knocks.”

“ _Fuck both of you then!_ ”

Delusion detests focus, and this sham of a romance provides the veil. Some variation of love that may in fact be dependence and even indifference. The things I've been driven to might be deplorable, but staying would be insanity. I grab my jacket from the back of couch. Roark's already opening the door. There's a bottle of wine on the kitchen counter beside him—I snatch it up by the neck.

“Not everyone will strangle the person they claim to love! Or choose heroin over them and then chastise _them_ for being an addict!”

“ _Fuck both of you!_ ”

“Go collapse the rest of your veins, then, and don't stop 'til your eyes roll back in your head, you fucking _psychotic, self-righteous prick!_ ”  


_ the boy took Johnny, he pushed him against the locker  
he drove it in, he drove it home, he drove it deep in Johnny _

_ Roark _

  
_“See. I get you've 'your little infatuation with him, but you've only known him a few months. I've known Nick years. This thing you two've chose to start means dick to him—compared to the band?—it isn't gonna last much longer.”_

_“No.” Slumped against the wall in the corner of the booth, with both his leather jacket and my coat as a pillow, he asserts this loud and firm, with an unexpected flare of energy and his eyes still closed. Surprised, I pull back a bit from the table and slide my beer closer towards me. “You don't know him the way I do. You don't understand. And... and it wasn't—it wasn't a choice. It just... happened.”_

_“What's'at mean?” Over my shoulder, I can see our middle-aged man still seated alone in the same booth, two over from ours. “You tripped, fell, landed on his dick?”_

_He's staring and, naturally, sees me seeing him. I keep looking, straight over his head now, and, by the grace of whoever or whatever, some stoned looking guy in stereotypical punk-dress comes through the door behind him. I wave to this miraculous stranger, he stares back in that socially awkward uncertainty of where we know each other from, and our witness seems to write the whole exchange of eye contact off as misinterpretation._

_I turn back around and Chris's wilted further sideways into the booth._

_“Fuck you.” He mumbles, his face coiling to something serpentine. It's good-natured—failing to take complete offense due to the very fact that I've been offending him all night—but still aggravated._

_“Well, Chris, I have to say... I can call you that, right? Short for Christian? I have to say—”_

_“Fuck you.” He repeats sleepily, mouth agape and reeking of his choice drinks of the night. He'll be out like a light any minute now. “No.”_

_“Oh. Right. Well, Chris, I'm a little embarrassed for you.”_

_I lean over the table, folding my arms flatly. There's a moment of silence. He sighs, sliding an arm under his head for more support. Too tired to keep up any argument, he resigns to the fact that I'm a rude son of a bitch, and makes some mumbled noise of affirmation for me to finish my thought._

_“It's not just me that feels this way. And that brings up a nice point—I know it's not the name itself, Chris, what's boiling your blood, because that's what dear Nicky says in your ear every night he buries his hard-on in your arse. And I'm sure, within that context, it makes your little heart flutter.” I lace my fingers together and stretch my palms back, cracking every knuckle. Through our evening's conversation, he seems to have become numb to my nasty remarks. “So I'm thinking—and I'm just going out on a limb here, Chris—I'm thinking it either bothers you because you find it embarrassing, which would be understandable, or because you feel violated when I say it. And the latter one is far more interesting to me.”_

_He sighs again. Hugging the jackets closer, he stretches out a bit more—totally horizontal now._

_“Es liegt mir nichts mehr daran...”_

_“Yeah. I already told you I can't speak that shit. But when I say interesting, I do mean interesting in the way you might call a fossilized dump Socrates took being displayed on a podium in a museum interesting. You let him call you_ Chris _, you call him_ Nicholas _... It's your little thing.”_

_“I don't care—call me Chris, then. Ist mir absolut egal.” At this point, he's the reeled-in fish flailing on the shore, stuck in the first stage of grief—denying his defeat-by-weariness with these last few bursts of consciousness. He hasn't opened his eyes for about ten minutes. All the long pauses—the slurring; I'd write him off as talking in his sleep if it weren't for his consistency with the conversation._

_Briefly, I glance over my shoulder again, and, surprise of surprises, our friend's still there._

_“Well, I'm sure you call him other things, Chris, but those are either harder to hear through the walls or they're in German, and, I have pointed out, my German is shit. But I do know that you do care.” I'm deadpanning this shit now. Watching his face, I can't tell if he's gone yet or if he's still waiting on my point._

_“Fine, I do then. Just... stop talking. I am... I'm tired of talking with you.”_

_“But, point being... You're quite transparently in love with Nick. Completely smitten.” The words are bitter and mocking, but they're leaving me mechanically, like I'm speaking from somewhere distant and I can't be bothered with trivial exertions like speech. There's a framed painting of a fish on the wall across from me; the way the light is cast on it, I can see this bloke's reflection. It's faint, but still distinguishable. “And like I've been trying to say, he really couldn't give a shit – about your little infatuation? This's so obvious to everyone else, it's really a bit embarrassing.”_

_He says nothing. I shift in my seat, tucking one leg in to sit on and get a different angle on the reflections in the glass._

_“But, as long as you two are at it the way you are, he seems... distracted. And this is where it starts being my concern. Because, if he's so far up your arse he can't think straight, that inevitably spills out to the music. And, well, as I said, you've been taking up quite a lot of my studio time.”_

_Victorious silence. I watch the painting intently. Gail's keys are on the table; it's just a matter of working out how to get him out to the car without drawing attention._

_The faint silhouette in the glass stands up. He's leaving the booth. It's like I can feel his eyes on the back of my head. There are only a few possibilities to get out of this that I can think of. I could take the keys and ditch him here, and wait it out in Gail's car until this guy leaves. I could, of course, ditch him altogether and forget about it, or—_

_“Pretty pathetic way to land yourself a date, lad.”_

_Instinctively, I swing around to look behind me. He's left the booth. My head turns back round into place, and, sure enough, he's invited himself to sit across from me, right beside Chris._

_“Excuse me?” Is about all I can muster. Above all things, I'm thrown off by his very presence, but I wasn't expecting the old generation UK accent, either._

_“Y'don't strike me as the type too timid to pay a whore for himself. I'd wager, ain't you's the problem, but something about this one? Or's the money too much for a conscious partner in your circumstance?” He shifts comfortably into the booth, resting his arms on the table._

_“Okay...” My heart's fallen into my stomach; the acidic burn rises up my esophagus, scathing my ever-short lungs, and my pulse throbs like a drum in my temples. Anxiety turns into speechlessness turns into sweat turns into anxiety.“If you'll excuse me... my friend's had too much to drink and I should be getting him home.”_

_“You should do that, but you're not gonna one way or the other.” He invites himself to a cigarette from my pack on the table, throwing it casually in his mouth and pulling a book of matches from his coat pocket. He both holds the book and shields the end of the cigarette with one hand, while deftly striking fire and then lighting up with the other._

_I'm unsure how to assess the severity of this threat. He's drunk—that much is obvious. I sit up straight, stretching and getting my leg out from under me with a bit of a fuss, misdirecting his attention while I put my hand over the car keys._

_“I really don't know what to tell you.”_

_He laughs, turning to look at the bartender, directing my attention now in an effort to extend the silent threat of attracting more unwanted parties._

_“You ain't takin' him home if you're takin' him anywhere, and you're not takin' him anywhere if I tell the barman here that sleight of hand o'yours what caused his little nap. Don't sound s'though this_ Nick _character's be too pleased with that turn of events, either.” He says smugly. Then he turns back around, and, not being a particularly tall character so much as short and stocky, props his dried-mud caked boots on the table._

_I follow his eyes to Chris this time; there's something in this whole approach that falls short of suggesting mere benevolent, altruistic intentions. Piecing together his disorderly gestures and the nature of his body language, I wouldn't be shocked if the proposition I'm considering has already been on his mind for the past half hour._

_“Alright. I'll concede that it'd be... impractical, at this point, taking him home without, let's say, paying fare.” Begrudgingly, I place the keys to the side of the table. I stretch my arms out, avoiding his boots, and touch my fingers together quizzically. I'm the director at the board meeting of degenerates mulling over a curious presentation. “It seeming you're so well versed in this area, what would you suppose it'd cost to get from here to there?”_

_He grins, brushes his nose off, and looks down laughing—glad we're on the same page, it'd seem._

_“Oh, 'depends. So to speak, sometimes a ride don't make it out here if's'not a profitable move. And by the looks of you lot, I'd say the wealth's already been thrown to the competition of the Main Line tracks.” With this bloke's direct line of vision and the simpleton pun, I remember that I've taken my jacket off and, considering that Chris is using it as a make-shift pillow, I can't do much but cross my arms in an attempt to shield the blatant injection sites that decorate my inner-arms._

_“Certainly there're exceptions... if, say, transport's been short of clientele, and just so happens to see something he likes?”_

_“What, your gangly arse?”_

_“Abandoning the metaphor, I was thinking more along the lines of my 'unconscious partner' there beside you.”_

_“Ah, naturally.” He leans over and grabs Chris's face, cigarette still smoldering in his fingers, and inspects him from different angles. A stubby, nicotine-stained thumb goes into Chris's mouth, pulling his lip down. It's a bit like watching a vet with a stray mutt. Pleased, he takes a quick look around the bar, exchanges an unspoken command of eye-contact with me to keep on the lookout, and then starts rolling Chris's shirt up to expose his chest. “He does have a certain charm on the eyes. Pretty thing for one of you junky skels, he is. Wager he'd_ pass for a lass _—right lighting, y'know, right booze. Dressed up, or down, the right way. Lovely mouth...”_

_Carnal appetite seems to have taken him over, to my advantage. Chris's showing no signs of waking, so he takes it a step further and makes a point of getting a good feel for the offer. He starts groping his thighs, reaching around to feel his ass up. He unzips Chris's pants, but quickly, frustratedly, realizes the futility in this due to the collection of belts and odd bondage restraints attaching his clothes together. It makes for a convenient blockade or halt in his excitement, bringing him away from mindless lust—where he might just turn feral on me and realize I'd be easily out-powered—and back to our negotiation._

_“I'm thinking we can arrange some sort of deal, then?” I say, only a little more than a whisper. As a sign of good faith, I slide the keys out to the center of the table._

_He turns his attention from feeling up Chris's groin to cast me a wary look._

_“And what, per se, is t'motivate me to share? Way I see it, I can take him off your hands, or I can notify the proper authorities.”_

_I'm grinning. Here comes the fun part._

_“Well, technically, yeah. You_ could _just take him off my hands. But then I might be the one contacting the proper authorities, you see.”_

_“Right, right.” He's obviously anxious to get all Chris's belts undone. He keeps looking over at the men's room door, unable, so it would seem, to keep it in his pants long enough to bear the thought of going somewhere that's not so heavily patronized—by Chris's friends, nonetheless. “Jus' give us a go or two with him and we'll see from there.”_

_“There's still the matter of... moving to a suitable location. Veritably speaking.”_  


__ I got a date, I'm a sword-swallowing whore  
I'm burning up, I'm burning up, so put some water on me  
I keep the pace till I'm torn, swollen and sore  
and, sure enough, they're turning up to drop a dollar on me  
we baptized each other in lover's spit  
well, even if we found love, what would we do with it?  
I found my faith, but I don't want it anymore  


_ Chris _

  
This weakness and desperation that I've been lugging around behind me like an anchor is finally dragging me down. I haven't got the energy or the strength of mind to struggle against it any longer, and I've sunk so deep that whatever moments of lucidity I once had where I could see that things didn't always feel like this—that I didn't always feel like this, that it's not my final destination, but just a long detour—have faded from my view. They're nothing but fleeting images in my mind's eye, unreal as a dream, and they're useless in any purpose but providing a basis for comparison that makes the empty space around me that much darker. I wish they'd leave me entirely. When you have no expectations, no hope, nothing to compare to, it makes it so much easier. It makes the abnormal normal.

I'm standing in front of the sink, pinching the cartilage of my nose, tilting my head back and waiting for the bleeding to stop. All I can see is the ceiling, but it just keep running and messing wet and warm all over my hand.

I notice some water stains in the east corner beside the mirror and it triggers a memory with deadly force. The flashback is so violent, I think I'm going to choke. The rings grow and mutate, taking on menacing shapes that bleed out into scabbed flecks of paint. They're bits of rotted dermis, withering in peeling flakes and falling to the floor, leaving dark, rusted scars behind.

I'm there again. On my back, stripped naked, my ankles caught in my pants, my hands over my head tangled and tied in my shirt, and the horrid, bouncing weight on top of me. The disgusting, soulless bag of flesh, forcing awkwardly in and out of me. I'm shot down and skinned, ravenously devoured, like a goddamn animal. Like I was fair game. I'm screaming but no noise will come—as if someone's pushing down on my throat. I'm torn. Sobbing. Resigned. Humiliated. Being split in half by a fucking hot bar of iron, with the only relief from the friction the blood that's spilling down my thighs. I know what's happening to me, but all I can do is stare at the water stains on the ceiling. He's grunting noises of pleasure and ecstasy over whatever whispers of whimpers I can make, and then _he_ laughs from the other end of the room. He fucking _laughs at me._

Pins and needles rush through my limbs and up to my head until I'm blind and my knees are buckling. Sparks go off behind my eyes—everything's a black shotgun blast of nerves and dizziness. I have to let go of my nose and use both arms to slouch over and hold onto the sink. I'm immobile. I can feel the blood running over my lips, dripping from my chin. Some of it's poured down the back of my throat, warm and metallic enough to make me sick. I cough and the blood gurgles from my throat, spluttering out my mouth and off my face, all over the sink; my back stings and seizes up in pain with the movement. My vision's come back just in time to see the red spills and splatters, and the fingerprint smears from my hand.

I can't stop thinking about it. I can't stop running through the events of the night. It _haunts_ me every time I close my eyes. The smallest change in the choices I could've made, so many things that would've resulted in this never having happened. The fatality, the demise, everything that has ultimately been at my hands, for foolish actions. How fucking badly I wanted Nick to be there to stop it—how angry I am that he wasn't. Both of which inspire more guilt.

Walking is an exhausting task. Standing here takes as much strength as I have. I've been hungry so long, I don't remember it any other way and I don't feel it anymore. There's just a burning sensation in my stomach that rises into my throat, sending waves of nausea like smoke-signals. I wish my mind would adapt the same way. At some point, I had the shreds of positivity left necessary to compare the way I treat myself with an abusive relationship. There was still that part of me that loved myself, in spite of the pain I put me through. Now, this is nothing more than conscienceless torture. A kid with an anthill and a magnifying glass. I'm waiting until it's all I can remember feeling—until it's all dark and my eyes adjust and forget there was ever anything brighter. Anything else.

Whatever happened to me was only the catalyst. On its own, this sickness has turned into something else entirely. I haven't even got the metabolic energy in me to do the only three things that I somehow pull off: drink, sleep, music. Without Nick, I would've already been cut off from everyone, and have disappeared and withered away into that void circle. Being surrounded by others somehow augments the isolation, but, at the same time, I don't want to be alone. I'm afraid to be alone.

I can't stand to look at myself—at my bony frame, at the blue veins all visible under my translucent skin. The sternum and ribs that jut out so visibly, the way the flesh of my face under the prominent points of my skull—my cheeks and eye sockets—disappears when I turn my head to either side in the mirror. Again, I've let myself be stripped—this time to the bone. I look like an animated skeleton. With blood dripping down to my chin, I'm something out of a horror film.

I run my hand through my hair and come up with a handful of loose, broken pieces. I'm coming apart. I really don't know why I would think he'd stick around for this, either. It shouldn't surprise me. I wouldn't stay. Or, at least, whatever person I used to be wouldn't have.

There's a few thumps from behind me, on the wall it sounds like. It takes me a second to register this information—someone's outside the door.

“Chris?” Mick calls, knocking again. “You dressed? – Can I come in?”

“Um, _ja_ , just...” I scramble around the counter for a tissue, not finding anything. _It shouldn't surprise me_ , I'm repeating in my head. Another cough comes up my throat, pressing all the air from my chest, and I bring up both hands one at a time to wipe the blood away, rushing to clean myself off. It just keeps dripping. I hold onto my nose, lean my head back again, but the door is clicking open behind me anyway. “Just a second.”

I can see him through the mirror with his head turned away, stopped in the cracked doorway. My vision won't stretch to anything other than the upper half of the room. Than the rings on the ceiling. Reaching to the side of the counter blindly for some tissue, I knock something over, and he hesitantly peeks in.

“Fuck.” The door swings open. He's staring at me, a word—or a name—on his tongue, held back, either politely for my sake or for not wanting to think it himself. “He didn't...?”

“No, I'm—it's nothing, I just... keep getting these.” I want to tell him plainly that Nick isn't at fault for this; that he's done enough, been patient enough with me, but the more I think about it, the more this hard lump blocks my throat. My anger with Nick is just augmented by his lack of guilt in everything; by his lack of action—my lack of action. I don't want to speak, or, I won't speak if I'm going to start getting emotional.

I'm using up all the clear spots remaining on my left hand. First a few fingers, then my palm, then the back, then the wrist, until it's all wet and red, and there's nowhere left to wipe the blood. Mick pushes into the bathroom, then takes my hand away from my face. My defenses surge into a panic when he touches me and I immediately backtrack, but I just hit the wall. I've cornered myself—put him between me and the door.

“Tilt forward—backward's just gonna make it go down your throat.” He eases my head down with both hands, and then grabs my nose, pinching just by the bridge. I don't know what to do with my arms. I don't know how to tell him to get his fucking hands off me. I'm afraid to—like it'll set all of this off again if I try to escape. I can see a box of tissues on the counter now, so I reach clumsily for a few and bunch them up without moving from where I stand. He takes that from me, too, though, and starts wiping my face off. “You should really be off your feet.”

“I'm fine.” There's some bitter combination of guilt and distress lingering in my mind, sparked to life again by whatever embarrassment I feel having other people take care of me—having Mick of all people take care of me. I'm uncomfortable, naturally, but this deep, horrifying fear—anxiety—grips me. I can feel it coming from all directions, like I'm waiting for something to drop; I'm ready to flinch. This threat—this exertion of power is metamorphosing in my mind to what is probably a mere gesture of generosity. But I don't understand it. It's overwhelming and I _don't want to be touched_.

Shaking, I put my hand over his, holding on to grab the tissue, in an effort to relay that I'm capable of taking over from here. He lets go of me—picks up on the hint and looks away. Surprise is not a reaction I'm comfortable feeling over someone treating me kindly. Perhaps for that very reason, it's quickly replaced with suspicion.

“I'm meeting up with Katy in a bit to get some coffee.” He says, like he's answering a question. I'm having a hard time understanding English, and I don't get why he's telling me, but the words marinate in my head and I realize it's an explanation for something else he's about to ask. “I'd say you should lie down, but I doubt you're gonna one way or another. D'you wanna come with me?”

The more I speak and the more I hear, the more these sounds seem foreign and meaningless. I understand the offer, but at the same time, my comprehension for the words and their independent expression is slipping away. Once I piece together what's been said—what's happening—I'm overwhelmed with doubt. Why does he care and what does he want from me?

“I need to talk to Nick.”

He reaches forward and the same nervous weight grows in my chest with anticipation of old pains returning. I'm frozen and forgotten to myself while my heart feeds curdled black milk to my veins; the very real unreality of this makes me lose track of any sense I have for time, space, or my location in the room around me, and it seems like forever until his hand bypasses me and I realize he's only pulling a few more tissues from the box on the counter. Frowning, he offers them to me, vaguely gesturing at his own neck to signal spots I've missed on myself, completely unaware of the episode I've just had.

“Yeah... He left with Roark.” He says this without any hint of interest. I can't really tell what it means—if he doesn't want me to talk to Nick, doesn't want to know about it, or if he doesn't think I should. Everything is in slow motion. I feel like breaking down and bawling at this point, but there's no safe, suitable location for it. I still don't like how close he's standing, or that he's basically the blockade between me and the door. “I'm just saying, it'd get you out of here for a little while.”

If this is meant to be incentive, I don't understand why. I don't know where else to go and I don't have any trust left. Hardly even for Nick—certainly not for any of his friends, or even my own. All reason points to that I shouldn't be afraid of Mick, but everyone is guilty until proven innocent to me right now. The proposition, in light of where we both stand, makes me feel forced to answer affirmatively. He's staring at me—waiting for me to return his gaze, to make some sort of acknowledgment of the offer. I notice now, the skin of his left eye is stained blueish black with broken veins, forming a crescent underneath.

“I don't... know. I don't understand.” I want to explain—I want to be able to weld a bridge for him to cross over into my plane of feeling, but the words leave my mouth and whatever meaning they seemed to have in my head falls dead to the floor, killed in the translation from emotion to language. He just looks at me like he sees me for the wreck I am and pities me for it.

“Do you want to sit down for a second or something?” I'm aware that I don't make sense, and how uneasily he says this, I can tell I should probably stop talking altogether. His face hardens in concern and he backs up a few steps so I can get around him to the door. I need no further invitation and I'm out in the hall within a matter of seconds, still wiping blood from my face.

Compared to all the steam and heat that built up in the bathroom, the air out here makes me wish I had more clothes with me, if only just a shirt. Mick follows me into the living room, shutting off the light and ventilation in the bathroom behind him. There's muted conversation coming from different parts of the flat, but it seems silent now. I'm trembling; I can't tell if it's from the draft or not.

I feel exposed and it puts me back into that night again: my heart galloping in my chest, throat burning and clenching, stomach wrenching into sick knots, pulsing with hate. Him waking me up deliberately to make sure that I'd feel it, that I'd remember it, that I'd be humiliated and traumatized. Driving into me in one quick, violent motion, and then stopping to watch me writhe, grinning, with a cigarette in his mouth—not interested in any gratification more than my agony. _Not quite what I was expecting for a five-hundred dollar whore._ I can't believe that I did this to myself.

Every part of me wants to stop here outside the kitchen and just sit on the floor. It's not worth it. The couch seems miles away, and I can feel my face flush and the room disjoint itself from me. It spins and teeters around me before the flush creeps behind my eyes and my vision leaves me for a picture of dancing traces of light over solid black. My stomach's started doing back-flips. The din of conversation is replaced with a high-pitched ringing in my ears. I've stopped walking. Mick is saying something; I'm not sure what.

“Einen Moment...” My voice is hoarse and rasping, panting and inert, jarred by the onslaught of emotions and the blood still dripping from the back of my throat.

I crouch to sit on the floor, and someone grabs my arms—Mick, I assume—to help ease me down. I hear Gail's voice, but I don't know what she says. They're both talking. The speech moves sluggishly through my ears, stalled in passing through the maze of my mind, becoming cryptic, alien nonsense before it has a chance to reach me.

_“Chris?”_

It's calm, soothing noise at first, but the voices raise and someone's touching me on the back; the pressure aggravates my sliced, bruised skin. It hurts, but I feel drawn to the heat of whoever it is that's cradling me. Someone takes my hand. I realize I'm groaning, but it's detached and distant, like hearing myself in a dream.

_“Mein Gott, he's freezing.”_

_“Chris?”_

My stomach is lurching and rising to the back of my throat, threatening to spill its contents. The room comes back into focus like somebody's slowly turning a light-dimmer up.

“Can you hear me?” Mick's voice is raised and distressed. He's kneeling in front of me, holding my hand, and Gail's at my side, arms around me and keeping me upright. The discomfort in my gut is growing—I'm fighting it, but the nausea rises and there's little I can do. I'm coughing, then dry-heaving. I twist to the side just in time for the sick to erupt out onto the kitchen floor. Mick lets my hand go, scrambling to get the tissues from me before they get soaked.

My throat and nostrils burn as it leaves in waves, convulsing my stomach to the point of knocking the wind out of me. It gushes wet onto the tile in sulfurous splatters, streaming out through the slated lines; bile, alcohol, and blood. Too late, Gail pulls my hair back. I can't stop gagging. The force of it moves me to my knees. It's flooding into my nose and dripping acridly down the back of my throat, ripping everything to sore shreds. I try to swallow, to stop for even just a moment to get some air back, but it rises back up again, retching out of me and collecting to the growing puddle on the floor.

“He's vomiting _blood?_ ” She murmurs to Mick in rhetorical terror.

“He must've swallowed it.”

I spit the last wet strings of it from my lips. The tissue changes hands between them and she wipes my mouth and chin before handing it back to me.

“Sorry.” I say with an almost perfect facade of calm indifference, as though this was a sudden, unexpected accident. As though I'm alright, and not completely falling apart, completely ill, completely out of breath. But I'm shaking. _Not quite what I was expecting for a five-hundred dollar whore._ I feel so fucking disgusting.

“Are you okay?” Mick says. It seems such a stupid thing to ask at first, but then, giving an honest answer seems like it could save me. I don't know what's holding me back—I just don't want to.

I need to wash this off of me. I need another drink.

My eyes are watering. My body betrays me; the muscles in my face seize up and it turns into tears. I try to inhale, but it comes in shudders. I try holding my breath instead, but the emotions move me regardless. I'm falling and unable to catch myself. A small whimper escapes—then my body starts rushing and convulsing to get back all the oxygen it's been missing.

“Oh, _Liebling._ ” Gail takes me in her arms again and presses my head to her chest, stroking my hair. The first sob seems to go out into the room like an explosive, and I brace myself accordingly, not really knowing what I'm afraid will detonate. Maybe my self-control, or what remains of my dignity. I shut my eyes, bite my lip, hold my breath again, but I can't stop. I'm just crying deeper, louder. Immediately, I feel ashamed of myself. I want to pull away from her and wipe my face, but I can't seize back control. I don't want anyone to see me this way.

“I'm not waiting; I'm taking him to the hospital. It's what Nick should've fucking done _this morning_. They're not gonna _give a shit_ if he has drugs in his system.”

“Get a towel and a shirt. _Bitte._ ” She shouts, firmly but still mannered. Mick just stands there. She exchanges commanding eye contact, raising her eyebrows, as if to ask him what he's waiting for. She points to the bedroom door and he hurries off.


	6. Devils/Angels

_ **Part VI** _   


> _"If I exorcise my **devils** , well, my **angels** may leave too."_  
> 
> 
>   
>  Tom Waits  
>  

> 
>   
> 

_ my eyes say their prayers to her, sailors ring her bell  
like a moth mistakes a light bulb for the moon and goes to hell _

_ Nick _

  
Walking down the slick, icy pavement, I'm trying to dig the cork out of this wine bottle with Roark's pocket knife and keep from slipping and falling on my face—or worse yet, the knife—at the same time. With the exception of the drizzling rain, the cold, dry air is cracking the skin of my hands. There are some stains on the blade I don't know what to make of. I really wish that I would've remembered my jacket before the alcohol. We're heading through the rain at an even speed toward the lights of an intersection about a block or so down. It'd be pitch-black if not for a few scattered streetlamps. Rather than the lights illuminating things, the darkness seems to be threatening to extinguish them.

This episode just feels like it's worsening. Roark's invited Anita along, only looking to me for my input in afterthought. In response to my whispered _'are you fucking kidding me'_ , he offered his covert shrug and widening of the eyes as a silent, sincerely casual, _'oh, sorry, my bad'_. There aren't any words, but if there need be: I feel restless. Supporting sunken eyes, sucked dry of natural energy, I would not have it in me to move if not for the fact that I knew the end result would bring an end to this pain. This uninspired desire that drives me to move my otherwise immobile body—this demon.

There is no apt description that I can think up for the discomfort I feel. My heart-rate hasn't gone down since we left. I don't want to explain myself to her, but I feel the need to justify it all—to tell her off for something she hasn't even said yet. My relationship with Chris isn't embarrassing, but I'm embarrassed by it. There's a new empathy or understanding I'm feeling for all the nights where I ended up having too much to drink and wouldn't keep my hands to myself, right in front of Mufti, Mark, Alex; whoever else. I don't really have close ties with anybody here; it never mattered to me. The few people I do care about—Roark, Mick—found out instantaneously. It was still awkward, but there wasn't any confrontation. They saw me fall in love with him and I never had to think about it. It was just _there_ , from the start, as it happened.

Why I stay now, I have to ask if I hate myself in some dark recess of my mind. I keep digging and digging violently into the bottle, scraping out chunks and bits of cork at a time, turning it into my cathartic pin cushion while these unrelenting images of Chris and Mick fucking assault my mind's eye. I used to think the way Mick never expressed any problems with or never had any questions about our relationship—the way he never gave it much consideration at all—was out of respect, or at least some silent understanding. I don't know now. I know that it's ridiculous, that it's too bizarre to believe, but I just keep picturing them together.

I'm wondering, suddenly, if intrusive thoughts like this are a universal experience when under stress. Compulsions and obsessions usually have to be the motor behind this kind of fixation, or at least I used to think so. Right now, it all plays like water running out a faucet. But just finally having a face to project onto the knowledge of his infidelity, the reality of it is hitting me full force, and I'm beginning to see that I don't know if I'll be able to forgive him. The sincerity in his illness makes it that much harder. I don't understand how, but I know it ties in to everything, and it makes me feel worse not knowing if I have the capacity to forgive him. He can conceal himself in the ill-fitting, torn up clothes he's developed an affinity for, conceal his thoughts and emotions and actions, but for all the secrecy it's provided, he might as well be presenting this fucked up, emotional breakdown on a platter. We're fooling ourselves if either of us thinks there's anything hidden at this point, and when he tries to hide, I only see him all the more.

I slip up trying to drag out the last bits of the stopper and the knife goes over the rim and into the index finger of the hand I have on the bottle's neck, slicing it open with a splash of red—far from the sort I've had in mind.

“Relax.” The words leave Roark as a definite command, half-mumbled as he takes a collected, no-hands drag off his cigarette and relieves me of my duty as bottle-opener. I can't tell his smoke clouds apart from my frozen breath. More adept and used to the blade and it's weight, it takes him all of five seconds to skewer the cork and pull it out. He stares into the bottle, makes a cartoonish face of disgust, and then takes a swig. Immediately, he spits some cut-up remnants of cork a good distance ahead. Every syllable dripping with artificial undertones, he says, “ _Delicious._ ”

In all nuances of body language and small talk, Anita's made it apparent she has questions she'd like answered as soon as we get a moment alone, but I have no reason to be explaining myself to her. It's none of her fucking business. Not anymore. It's just this sense of violation, of someone trespassing on my private life.

I thought I was over this. I thought that all the ridicule and harassment growing up had scraped away my thin skin—that it was with that damage and pain that I formed a tough hide of scar-tissue. I thought I'd been made prematurely stronger from being thrust into a much more abrasive environment of gender roles and identity—that I was the one that had the armor and Chris was the one that opted for secrecy. But now I feel it. I get it. There are outsiders loitering in my business. Not strangers, not close friends, but people I still care for, whose opinions matter to me. They're in my emotions and on my territory, and somehow I'm worried about how they'll see it and whether or not they'll feel distaste and reject me for it. Regret has taken hold of me, but I'm not even sure of what for.

Why the fuck did it have to be _now_ that she finds out? I don't need her—I don't need Chris. I just need to score and be done with this shit.

There are walls of snow shoveled high around us; patches of concrete have melted into view on the ground with the rain. The impending sense that the snow piles are going to sink under their own weight and avalanche over me is as real as anticipating the movement of traffic, but then we reach the end of the block and the feeling vanishes. Halfway down the crosswalk, some blue car makes a sharp turn in front of us and speeds away, zooming through puddles and splashing Roark's pants-legs, nearly running him over in the process.

“Cocksucker!” He stops and yells after it. This triggers vivid pictures of Chris's infidelities, and I'd like to punch Roark in the goddamn teeth. As clueless as he is, he's been well-intentioned and the only friend I have left, so I take the wine from him instead. Anita sighs, irritated with our combined crassness and otherwise bad-mannered lack of recognition for her being here. Too bad. I'm not the one that fucking invited her.

It's like there's been this wide gap between me and her and everybody and anybody, and it's just vanished. First it kept me walled off from other people. Being together with him, staying at a distance from everyone else, birthed claustrophobia and isolation at first; but being on the other side, being away from him, would've meant profound loneliness and grief—a sense of loss, constantly present, like the phantom of an amputated limb.

I've gotten used to being hidden away with him; I've gotten used to the walls. Now they're being demolished. Someone's taken the liberty of renovating my home as they see fit without even asking, and I've been there so long, I'd forgotten that I was actually inside anything. That there was an outside. I'm panicked and angry and distressed. My habitat's been disrupted. It's like some fucked up Garden of Eden; I've realized I'm naked. I _feel_ naked, and there's still a hammer—a wrecking ball—pounding in my chest.

“How far into the fucking slums is this guy?” I say. I'm surprised by the volume of my voice.

Roark stops. He turns to face me, his back to the street and a light behind him silhouetting his face and shoulders.

“You're welcome.” He says with flourish. His acting skills are impeccable. I'm too wet and cold for this shit; too tired, too stressed, too fucking _everything_. After I roll my eyes, he drops the pretend hospitality, switching back to the usual dry monotone. He's stepping casually out of the spotlight, kicking the street idly with his hands in his pockets—his face visible again. The shadows are so drastic with the angle the light hits him, the long shapes they cast under his features make him look impish. “Next building, Nick. How about we all pitch in, by the way? I mean, the gratitude you're both exuding is return enough, but I can't pay the guy in hugs and kisses. At least...”

He stops short, realizing I already know what's on the tip of his tongue and that there's nothing to be had in aggravating me with more humiliation in front of Anita about the shady sexual escapades that sometimes fund my habit. He clears his throat, plants both his feet together, shifting his weight from the front and back of his heels, rocking subtly, and he starts whistling. Some casual, comic tune of being about one's affairs for theatric effect, like he's forgotten us and will continue minding his own business until we make some contribution.

Anita bends over—the end of her coat rides up to show her back and her pants are tight enough that I can see the line of her underwear, or lack thereof—and she starts unbuckling her boot. Why do I care what she thinks? It's been over between us for a year now, and what I have—or had—with Chris takes precedence far above her. I dig into my back pocket for my wallet, but then I remember it's already been emptied out. She comes up with a fairly thick roll of cash and starts sliding bills out like she's working a deck of cards. She hits forty and stops, but Roark keeps staring, smiling expectantly, looking like a monster in the shadows not moving his hands from his pockets. Annoyed, she slowly deals out a few more bills, one at a time, until she hits the magic number and he extends his hand.

“That's right, Pastor Jones is passing 'round the collection plate. Be generous, kids.” He starts come-hither waving four fingers together at me, holding the cash in place in his palm with his thumb. She's shoving the money back into her boot, but I just shake my head.

“I already paid for both of us at the fucking show.”

“ _Language._ ” He pulls his head back like he's a character in a comic panel whose just been startled. He shrugs it off and makes a face, looking askance, like I'm asking for an over-gracious apology—like I'm overreacting because I sucked the dealer's dick and shared nearly half of the profit with him. “Alright, Hugs-And-Kisses, alright.”

The bundle was already light to begin with; cutting it in half with him, I might as well not have even bothered.

The money's pointed back in Anita's direction. For me, I know there's nothing left between her and I more than a friendship; still, for some reason, I don't want her to think of me as a _faggot_. The whole idea contained in that word, in that impression, seems completely alien to my relationship with Chris—to my love for him. It seems like a misunderstanding, even. Roark is waving his hand yet again, coaxing now for her to dig the difference back out from her boots, just as she's zipping them up.

“You're kidding me.” She says, still bent over with the zipper halfway done. Roark shrugs again and looks at me, as if in explanation. I take a gulp of wine. It's full of cork and tastes like shit.

“Well, as we just established, he already donated generously to the red crossroad cause back at the club.”

“Then _you_ owe him the difference.”

I need to sit down. I can't listen to this. My limbs are getting heavier—the cold sweat has started in. I'm zoning out. I hear the conversation, but it's illegible, aggravating babble. Like there's a fly buzzing around a closed room. It's just a soundtrack to the horror-show of insecurities in my head. The lump in my throat chokes me while the ache in my stomach is shouting _'feed me'_ so loud, it clouds my judgment and I hear nothing else.

“So it would seem... but—I am, so to speak, your tour-guide. And my expertise, like so many other things in this world, does _not_ come free. What he would owe me, I've now dismissed with my debt to him. You, on the other hand—”

“ _Fine._ ”

I'm overcome with the realization that I haven't given any thought to the emergent strength I've somehow found to venture further down this no man's land. It could easily be mistaken for the natural energy of an average, unspoiled person, but it's my appetite for a solitary remedy.

She's staring at him, unmoving. I can't wait for them to settle on an agreement any longer. The wine is almost gone.

“Well then?” He raises his eyebrows, gesturing for her to take the appropriate actions to accompany these words of concession.

“If I'm going to pay for it, then let me pay for it.”

“Well, if I'm going to be thinking about all of us, then let me do the thinking. It's in everyone's best interest if we don't take the whole group along for this particular transaction, my dear.”

I have misplaced my morals—replaced them instead with a self-inflicted and self-fulfilling need. An illness. Something in me keeps repeating and rewinding the way I tore the bathroom apart; every time, my brain stops and pauses on the look of despair and complete surrender on Chris's face. He was practically begging me not to leave him, but I felt and still feel no sympathy or obligation. I'm unable to articulate any thought or emotion other than the unrelenting desire growling in the pits of my stomach—spewing from my mind's eye—to remedy my current condition.

“You expect me to trust you to go in there with all my money, while I just patiently wait here outside in the rain in good faith?”

“Well, in your case, I could quite possibly see myself considering hugs and kisses as a medium of exchange—”

There's this overwhelming, unrelenting melancholy that rushes the pillars of my mind's eye, where a forecastle of thoughts battle and brew. The truth is, I miss Chris.

“Don't fuck with me, Roark.”

“Let me put it to you this way: the kid up there's observant. He notices when I've done something different with my hair, when the key-chain on my wallet is sticking out at just such an angle that it could be a potential receptor for radio waves... Y'know—those nice little things that are really all a girl could ask for. After eight years _'in Soviet Gulag'_ , several of which I've come to assume were spent in solitary confinement, he's... shy around new faces. I've never brought anyone around him before, and it's likely to... let's say, raise a few questions if I start now.”

“Then introduce us.”

“Alright. Alright, fine. We can risk potentially sketching him out and coming up empty handed after a couple hours of complete meltdown, so that you can all become acquainted and give the introductions and the bows and the curtsies that social propriety demands of you in these black market exchanges—”

“You're serious?”

“I don't know him very well, but previous encounters have led me to believe that he's an unbalanced schizophrenic with a dicey dependency on the drugs that he deals. I'll be in and out.”

I can't fathom a fate worse than addiction.

__ thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house or covet thy neighbor's wife  
but for some, murder is the only door through which they enter life  
now, the woods will never tell what sleeps beneath the trees  
or what's buried 'neath a rock or hiding in the leaves  
'cause roadkill has it's seasons just like anything  
it's possums in the autumn and it's farm cats in the spring 

_ Roark _

  
_My vision keeps alternating in the rear-view mirror between Chris's sleeping face and the motel lobby, where my new friend is making the proper arrangements. Having an empty-headed lout to fall back on and parade about as the visible suspect for eye-witnesses is rather fortunate when I think about it, but I can't help feeling nervous at the prospect of him fucking everything up. He's too drunk to walk a straight line, even if it were daylight, and the late hour and criminal situation seems to have drained him of any capabilities for wit or discretion._

_In a less than frantic manner, I am double-checking the pockets of my coat, turning up an unsuccessful search for my smokes. A still-frame of the pack sitting lonesome on the bar table infiltrates my mind's eye, swaying me to call off the search party, and I must now resort to other measures._

_The parking lot is barely lit by either the lights from the main building or a streetlamp on the other side of the block. It's dark enough for my purposes, and fog's wafting through the air, forming a hazy cage around the motel that bars any escape. Anything not within a few yards or so takes on a distant, cloudy appearance. There's shades-of-garbage rainbow graffiti covering the walls and iron-barred windows up the side of this warehouse next door, cutting artfully off at the highest points of the arm's stretch into high-reaching abyss of gray brick and shadow._

_It basically looks like someone vomited urban destitution and dumpsters of torn plastic trash bags onto the walls in exquisite patterns, either with the help of god's hand or science's one-in-a-million hand of chance. I recognize a word here and there, but the rest of it might as well be Chinese algebra. It's dizzying to look at, like I'm huffing all the aerosol shit that's been caked on the wall-span just by glancing over it._

_I reach over the center console of the car, snatching up a slightly caved in soft-pack of Camels left behind by my new friend. Facing filter down, only his 'lucky' cigarette remains. I take it nonetheless, breaking a sacred and superstitious etiquette. Against my better judgment, no quicker than the spark of my lighter, I'm inhaling and the menthol taste is that much more satisfying._

_Other than the hum of the engine, it's dead silent. My eyes are my primary sense right now, drinking in all the illegible German spray-painting. It sprawls out in all directions, bleeding onto the floor, over a good portion of the steps, and covering the windows entirely. It's frigid and stone-cold as it is, but some orange glare from inside projects through the thick layers upon layers of ruddy-colored pictures and writing over the windows, taunting my shivering fucking bones with thoughts of open fires. On the other hand, I have to wonder who's inside. Who might be watching._

_My hands start to shake, and I know it is not from the cold. The nicotine stains my fingers and hangs heavy in the air around my hands—an imitation of the fog outside. It does nothing to calm the sickness in my stomach, but it helps my mind relax._

_What's taking him so long?_

_I'm struggling to dispel the despondence in my gut as I watch the lines burn and turn to ash. Annoyed by the arrant impotency of this 'nerve calming' nectar, I find myself_ philosophastering _the act or purpose of smoking cigarettes. It's almost a conundrum of a habit. Nicotine acts as both a stimulant and depressant, like mixing caffeine and alcohol. A rush followed by a crash._

 _With no activity to be seen in the lobby, my focus ends up back with Chris. He rises and falls softly with every breath; his face looks serene. The appearance of comfort drags the spite and rage out of me, like some mass of drifting garbage caught on a fishing line. Watching him talk with Nick, watching him try to get close to him when he's so far above his reach, made me cringe at first. It flushed my face with hot jealousy. But seeing this shell of a person, animated by nothing but esoteric pretension, nothing but_ make-believe _, trying to have him, trying to take my place—it's too profane for words._

_My patience has held out for too long. I can't take the waiting game. Fortunately, my fall-guy's stocky frame comes into view in the mirror, walking determinedly toward the car with room-key in hand._

_I swing round from the steering wheel to check him in my blind-spot. It's forever and a day before he makes it to the passenger door, but when he does—right when that blast of cold air hits as he climbs in—I lean straight across the gears and armrest to take the key from him._

_“I trust you with the car—'can keep the heat on, if you want. I'll come get you when I'm through.” My muttering is distracted and secondary; my thoughts are racing through the task at hand—through all the possible problems and complications. His eyes blow up in disbelief and he closes his fist around the key before I can grab it._

_“Oh,_ fuck _you.” He draws out the expletive's vowel obnoxiously long and sharply quips the last word, like the blaring refrain of a car horn before the silencing crunch of a wreck. My eyes are rolling of their own volition behind my sunglasses. “And how's it you're seein' this fuckin' chain of events play, my friend?”_

_If my mouth weren't so dry, I'd be aiming to spit in his face right now. This anxiety bullshit doesn't suit me. I'm not in the mood to play the private tutor to his colorful bewilderment. Perhaps such a feeble mind may have been cute to his mother at one point, but I've not the energy nor the composure to pander to his misconceptions about who's in control of this situation._

_“Listen to me, you mental defective,_ low-level pervert. _Whose name is the room registered under? Whose face have the staff seen? I have news for you,_ friend. _He works at that bar—it's full of his friends, his co-workers. They know him and they know me. Between the two of us carrying him out, who do you think is going to stick in that bartender's memory when the police drop by to ask a few questions? At this point, it's charitable of me to even let you stare at him again, you depraved fucking drunkard nonce. Keep your goddamn mouth shut and stay in the car, and you'll get your turn. It's that, or you can forget about the whole fucking thing and this night ends with you_ in a jail cell _.”_

_Speechlessness strikes him. Finally, after he's been running his mouth the past fucking half hour. He glares at me, ever arrogant with his chin pulled in and his chest pushed out. Still, I've hit home with the hole he's dug himself into. His grip loosens enough around the key that I can I pry it from his fingers. Room thirty._

_“Fuckin' sick in the head, you are, and pointin' the finger at me. If you're astute to recognizing any perversions o' mine, it's out of your own familiarity and habit in that field, lad.” He's running at the mouth, stammering—defensive after having been caught for the prowling deviant he is. I lean back against my door to throw it open, sliding out from my seat in a hurry. “You were long on your way to this_ depravity _before I darkened your night.”_

_“Yeah, whatever, you great pillock. Don't whine so much—I'm sure your sick mind'll find a way to get off on the idea.” I can't believe how cold it is; my nose already hurts. I'm far too tense, and it comes to my attention when I make to pull the locked door open and practically pop my shoulder out of place. Hastily, I reach my arm back around the inside past the driver's seat to unlatch it. “Wake him and tell him what a slut he is taking two men in one night, for all I care. I'll be out of the picture and out of the way, if you can just keep it in your fucking trousers a bit longer.”_

_Getting the door open gives me a head rush. Chris's sprawled sideways on the seats, with his head furthest from me. There's plenty of time to waste before I have to start worrying too much, but this is my sole opportunity. I'm not going to let any of it pass that I can help. I take the key in my teeth and grab him by his boots, dragging his limp body toward me until his back is nearly over the edge of the seat._

_“I'm keepin' the heat on. And don't be sore when I drive off an' leave you to hang if anyone comes pokin' around.” He prattles on, glowering between the armrest space from the front—at the same time, envious and admiring as I scoop an arm under his sleeping beauty's knees, and then the other around his back. He's not as heavy as I would've thought._

_“It's not my car.” With my arms busy holding Chris bridal-style and my mouth full with the number-plated keychain, I manage both to kick the door closed and belt out this final, role-establishing remark. Outraged to find that his only remaining leverage is another lie, fall-guy crawls into the driver's seat._

_“Anything else I should know?” There's an overtaken note in his voice—an admission of defeat—as he calls out to the whole parking lot. It's rage-filled and helpless, and completely unnecessary. Practically hopping on one foot to keep my balance, I kick the driver's door shut in his face in response. As my arms are already falling asleep, I'm starting to have second thoughts about this particular bright approach I've taken to the problem of getting Chris into the room. He doesn't take the hint to shut up, and instead starts furiously rolling down the window. “_ I'll take that as a no? _”_

_“Take it... Paint it white... Run it up the flagpole...” I give myself a moment to find my center of gravity again with the weight in my arms. Spitting the keys out onto Chris's chest, I heave him up to get a better grip, and I start on my way toward the block of numbered doors. “And stick it up your arse.”_

_Whatever he's saying now, I'm blocking it out. The only real things remaining are the obstacles between me and dropping my guard—me and the goal. I'm counting them down with every step I take. Every winded, frozen breath. I see the row of doors and the numbers adorning each one, but the fog is too thick to read them from a distance. The space isn't closing fast enough, and he's starting to slip from me, but I can't let myself panic. Not now. Not when I've gotten this far._

_I stop once more to hoist him up into my arms, using my raised knee as a momentary resting base for the boost. Another few drudging steps and I can see room numbers counting up, going left-to-right across the span of doors. Room thirty. I focus on it._

_Maybe I should feel shame. I don't know what I'm feeling. I don't know if I'm feeling. I know that I'm trembling. Either way, I really don't care. In spite of the cold, sweat is beginning to bead on my forehead, neck, and back, and I consider dropping him to take off my jacket, but I just watch as the door gets closer, and think about the inside. How can this be taking so long?_

_I shut my eyes, waiting to run into a wall. I see nothingness. I hear my shoes click on the wet pavement; I feel myself drawing on the cigarette, disassociated from my body. Then it's a roar of a fire behind my eyes and a rushing sequence of pictures—a Freudian photo album of all my rage and bitterness. I want to drop him and kick his fucking ribs in. Puncture a lung with a nice sharp chunk of bone. I want to dent his face with the blunt end of my pocket-knife until he's unrecognizable. I can see the gratifying, slow-motion splatter of teeth and blood. As tempting as it is, there's something much worse to be done. Much worse, and therefore that much better._

_The height and texture of the ground beneath my feet changes and I resurface, opening my eyes._

_Thirty._

__ life is filled with holes, Johnny's lying there in his sperm coffin  
angel looks down at him and says, “oh, pretty boy,  
can't you show me nothing but surrender?”

_ Chris _

  
I wake up with a start, mid-fall and nearly throwing myself from my seat. Vertigo overtakes me, but my mind soon harmonizes with my body and realizes we're motionless and strapped into the passenger seat of a car. A turn signal is ticking innocuously. The radio is on low, playing a song full of upright bass, major chords, and male vocals backed quartet-style that sounds faintly familiar.

_When you're smiling (when you're smiling)_  
And the whole world smiles with you (smiles with you)  


The windshield-wipers squeak across the glass once and back again, drowning out the sound of the music. In spite of the odd noises, it feels silent. Dead. Everything's dark except for glowing icons on the dashboard and the red light ahead. It reflects off the rain-dappled windows, covering the car in red water.

How did I get here?

I'm cold, damp with sweat. Rubbing my nose, I squint, trying to block out the glow, but it lingers, blaring cyan behind my eyelids. My head is throbbing, feverish warm, and I feel sick to my stomach, like there's a pill stuck in my throat. My back is so tender, I'm squirming to sit up despite this half-awake stupor. The flashes of recorded images from my dream are leaving me as soon as I can take hold of them, leaking away like water through cupped hands. Worth a thousand words or not, the fleeting pictures speak very little to my conscious mind.

“Nick?” I'm wearing his jacket. I can smell him, his aftershave, his cigarettes, his sweat, like he's here with his arms around me. Apart from the general feeling that I've been hit by a bus, I'm uncomfortable, confused, and freezing; my neck is stiff, my mouth like sand-paper. I've been slouched in this seat, lying on my back, and it stings so much it's paralyzing. I'm trembling, cringing, shrinking away from the burn, waiting to heal, like I've just poured alcohol into an open cut, but the feeling doesn't leave. I can't shake the apathy to unfasten the seatbelt and move, so I let myself steep here in the pain. “ _Wo bin ich hier?_ ”

_And when you're laughing (when you're laughing)  
Oh, you're laughing (oh, you're laughing)_

My dream may be gone, but there's an illness growing to an unnameable shame in my gut, burrowing through my system with as much clamor and fight as possible. I feel guilty. Disgusting. I can't remember why. The last thing I do remember is shifting my body's weight to the left in an attempt to avoid face-planting into a pool of my own vomit. This does nothing to alleviate the creeping feeling up the back of my throat, and another high tide of shame and self-hate crashes over me as I recall crying hysterically on Gail's floor. I can't believe I let her see me like that. Like this. I don't want to know who else might've been there.

Why was I over Gail's?

The light changes. The car starts rolling forward and I realize Nick's not here. This sends a surge of melancholy through me, but it also comes to my attention that I don't know who's driving. Fear resurfaces. My vision is still blurred and shadows keep dancing through the windows, passing over his face, mapping it out in waves. The glow from the dashboard provides a little light, but I can't see straight. He's familiar, and I can't settle on whether that brings me comfort or not. My back hurts so much it's intensifying the nausea. My thoughts are disjointed and nonsensical somehow; there's a berserk scramble in my brain to decide on some course of action, but I can't find my lungs to breathe.

“You're awake.” It's Mick's voice.

_Man, the sun comes shining through (shining through)_

“ _Wohin..._ ” My mind is floating away from me. The channel keeps changing. I don't know how to express myself anymore. I feel like I've been dreaming—like I'm still dreaming. The moonlight's reflecting off of the snow and wet pavement—shining luminescent blues and yellows over the film-reel of passing streets in the glass of my window. None of this looks familiar.

“Um,” He makes a contemplative noise, then clicks his tongue against his teeth and takes a deep breath in. I can see his shadowed face furrowing, either in confusion or thought, but his eyes never leave the road. I don't understand. The anger, the injustice in being carried around, lead to-and-fro, like I'm someone's luggage, is growing too large for me to either comprehend or contain.

“What are you doing? Why...” I can't remember. _I can't remember anything._ I don't know where I am, why I'm here, how I got here, what's happening to me, what Mick has to do with any of it. The only things that make sense, that are accessible to me in this state, are the facts that Nick is gone, I'm in a great deal of pain, and I need to throw up. “ _Nein. Nein,_ stop.”

_When you're crying (when you're crying)_

“I'm taking you to the hospital.”

That's another drop of anger in the bucket.

_You bring on the rain (bring on the rain)_

“Stop the car.”

“You need to be seen by a doctor.”

_Stop your sighing (stop your sighing)_

What _the fuck_ is going on? I haven't got any answers, and there's another burning belch of vomit brimming up my throat.

_Won't you be happy again? (happy again)_

“ _Stop._ ”

“You need... I don't think you understand how sick you are.”

“I'm _going to be_ sick— _Stop the car_.”

_Keep on smiling! (keep on smiling)  
And the whole world smiles with you_

It takes him a moment of _ah's_ and _um's_ to process this information. The instant it registers is indicated by nervous swearing and the song on the radio swinging into a saxophone break. The turn signal starts ticking and the car is gliding toward the road's shoulder. I'm fumbling to unbuckle my seatbelt, eager to purge just to get the feeling to go away.

_When you're laughing  
you bring on the joy (bring on the joy)_

We're off by the curb now and he slams on the breaks. The jerk of my body when the car stops makes it worse. Something clicks and the belt slides away. I grab the handle; the door is locked. I'm reaching around for it, but Mick has already unfastened his belt and he leans over to unlatch it for me. I've started retching—this horrible bubbling coming up from my stomach. I throw myself through the cracked space, out into the frigid wind and rain, and then I'm falling out, pushing the door open the rest of the way with my weight.

_Be happy! (be happy)_

My palms hit rough, wet cement, followed shortly after by my knees. It feels like I've just fallen through the ice on the surface of a lake, down into the depths of freezing water. The discomfort in my stomach clenches violently; it erupts out of my mouth and up my nose, onto the sidewalk. The heat of it turns to mist in the cold air. It stings—my eyes are watering. Another wave comes, first as a gurgling dry-heave, and then another burning, acrid expulsion of bile.

_'Cause I'm the Shei—_

The engine stops—the song cuts off. The driver's door slams. Mick is coming around the back of the car. I think he's saying something, but the sounds of his boots on the wet road, the jingle of the keys, and the vomit hitting the pavement are all so loud, I can't understand him.

When I shut my eyes, I see Roark's face—him putting his hand on my leg, snaking it up my thigh, hissing in my ear. It activates whatever related memories are still intact, recorded sensually and blindly, like nightmarish, vivid movements from a dream. I remember the crowd. Falling down and the pain of the collapse is a pictureless, intense sensation, echoed in waking life by my headache. Gail's flat is no clearer, but perhaps worse off for it; it's just as distant, and still all I can revive from that nightmare is having sobbed with complete, drunken abandon on her floor. Fear engulfs me—not for what I might've done, but what I might've said.

The nausea has gone and left a sore throat in its place. Nothing else is coming up. While my breathing starts to steady, I spit until the last strings dripping from my lips to the floor break and most of the taste leaves my mouth. Crawling back to crouch on my feet, I realize my pants are soaked from the knees down in rain and melted snow. My palms are scoured; my hands and face are numb from the cold. My chin has started moving involuntarily, chattering to regain heat. It's such an overload of discomfort, I can barely register any of these varied physical ailments apart from my back, let alone the rain pouring down on me. At most, I feel some dismay that Nick's jacket is getting soaked.

Mick is standing above me, shrouded in the dark with his hands in his pockets and his breath floating away in the air.

“You okay to get back in the car?” He takes a hand out from his coat, gesturing at the door. I still can't see his face clearly, and this whole thing feels patronizing—but, I realize he's offering to help me up. “Or do you need a couple minutes?”

I shake my head.

“I don't...”

He bends down, putting his hand in front of me to take. He lights up, saintlike in the beam of a nearby streetlight now with all the shadows washed from his face. I didn't realize how heavy it's raining until now; he's barely been out a minute and he's drenched. Instead of giving recognition to anything happening with my body, with my mind, I'm idly wondering what day it is.

“Hm?” He looks so sincere. So worried.

“I want to go home.”

Sudden austerity lines his expression. When I don't take his hand, he retreats, squatting on his heels and resting his arms on either of his knees. My eyes are still blurred and the light looks as if it glows off of him in streaks.

“I want for you to go home, too, but you really need to get checked out by a doctor.” None of this is right. I shake my head again. Looking away, down the road, he sighs. It sounds sad. First Gail, then Mark and Mufti doting on me—like I have a terminal disease—and now him. I don't know why he's bothering; I just want to be left alone. Left here. He's wasting his time. “Do you... want to stop somewhere—get cleaned up first? Eat something?

“I'm not... I don't know.” There's a disconnect between my thoughts and my speech, my intentions and my movements. It's like I'm not in full control, or I've taken a backseat to fatigue. My stomach is still sour; my head is pounding. I have no coordination to dare to stand up and walk away. I pull my hands back to slip inside of the sleeves of Nick's jacket. Grabbing onto the fabric, I hold it there and cross my arms over my chest, bringing it close to my face. Close enough to smell him. To feel like he's there. “Where's Nick?”

“It's kind of cold to be sitting out here—you can think about it in the car, if you want.”

 _Want:_ this word keeps coming up. I don't know what I want.

I want a drink. I want to go home, but I don't know where home is. I'm suddenly thinking of my parents, and the disconnect I feel from everyone around me widens by miles at the idea of facing them after what's happened. After what I've done. Where do I go from here? What jump is there left to make?

“Where's Nick? What...” I have déjà vu. He's looking at me again—this familiar expression of pity.

I can't tell if I've confused or upset him, but I don't like the way he's staring. I feel so strongly that I've seen it before. He doesn't say anything. Running a hand over his jaw, interrupting the rain down his face, he clears his throat and his eyes break away from me to the ground. Perhaps he's beginning to wonder as much as I am what he's doing here.

It hits me, head-on collision with my ego, that I have already had this conversation with him. He was there. He was with Gail. My chest is tightening at the thought. What the fuck have I done? Apart from make a fool of myself. What did I say?

“Let me just drive us a few more blocks—we can talk about it, you can warm up a minute inside somewhere?” This suggestion is so benign, he must think I'm in the rubble of a fatal, emotional wreck. Mild and amiable, looking harmless with his eyes squinting from the water and the light, and his hair dark and damp, he offers me his hand yet again. I'm shaking. Something screams in my gut not to, but I reach out and take it.


	7. Truth

> _"The winds of gossip blow from the chests of people ventilating their opinions; so the soul is carried about and turned, twisted and twisted back again. The light is obscured from it by a cloud, the **truth** is not perceived. Yet look, it lies before us."_
> 
>   
>  Augustine of Hippo  
>  


you walk into the room with your pencil in your hand  
you see somebody naked and you say, “who is that man?”  
you try so hard but you don't understand just what you'll say when you get home  
because something is happening here but you don't know what it is  
do you, Mister Jones? 

_ Nick _

  
“He isn't coming back, is he?” Anita finally puts an end to the silence. It's been half a _fucking_ hour. Our noses are running—our teeth chattering. I'm rubbing my hands up and down my arms to generate some heat. At least she has her coat on. I'm starting to feel paranoid standing on the corner here like I'm in a Lou Reed song in the dark, in the rain. It's obvious Roark's conned us, sinking even lower than me now in sick deeds to feed the sickness.

The experience is mutual, so much so there's been no point in talking. There's been no motivation to talk, either, for the same reason. But then there's another matter under the surface, where her and I are still standing on entirely different planes. That uncomfortable conversation that's yet to be had, that I can tell she's been trying to wrangle in by focusing on and verbalizing what understanding already exists between us in our current situation.

“I can't fucking _believe..._ ” I hurl the empty wine bottle by the neck at the wet pavement. It shatters with volume like a gunshot in the context of this silent, seedy street. I recoil a little in reflex, even though I caused the noise. “I mean, what _the fuck?_ ”

I've got one idea left and I really don't want to use it. There aren't any other options, though. Whatever other opportunities have presented themselves throughout the night, they've all receded back into the woodwork. I'm in some annoying, physically sickening game of whack-a-mole, where good fortune keeps eluding me and burrowing back into the ground.

This whole night would've gone so much smoother if she just never showed up at the club. I doubt that I would've still punched Mick. I wouldn't have been as timid and spineless about getting Chris to the hospital instead of going to someone's fucking apartment. Mick probably would've backed me up on that, then. I wouldn't have had any reservations about telling everyone to fuck off and leave my relationship to the people actually involved. Chris probably wouldn't have gotten pissed at me and stormed off to the bathroom. I wouldn't have lost my shit with him. And I _fucking definitely_ wouldn't have let Roark go upstairs, alone, with _all the money_.

I can only wager that if my dick had an off switch, I'd be a happier man. How perfect this whole night is turning out to be.

“It's my fault. I shouldn't have trusted him.” Whether I agree or not, this is a compromise of blame she doesn't really mean, meant to humble herself to something more approachable. This is all precluding the very unapproachable topic I know she's been waiting to get to all night. “Lydia's going to be furious—she warned me not to let him go alone.”

“No. _Fuck that shit._ ” I keep scratching my neck, wiping rainwater from my face. My nerves won't settle. What was a pang of humiliation in my gut is growing into a rapid-fire assault. I shouldn't have needed Chris to practically give himself brain damage to realize how bankrupt we both are of stability and sanity—of anything remotely resembling love anymore. I've been trying so hard to make this work, but what for? I wanted an escape, a way out of the mess and stalling in the rubble of sad, bitter refrain. Maybe my ticket out is very literally a ticket out.

And if I don't already have enough regret to fill my cup, she just makes me feel so guilty about it, my mind is overflown. My feet are already getting ahead of me; unconscious or not, my whole body is in on getting myself right. The fact that I'm even entertaining this last resort holds a frightening mirror to the desperation that's growing uglier and more unbearable by the second. I'll take the trade-off between that and this futile waiting game, though—without a second's hesitation. After what I did to get a fix in a few hours ago, how bad could this be? _The more bad you've done, the less it bothers you._ I'll bare through the necessary small-talk, down as much alcohol as it takes in order _to_ get through that, and I'll be in and out, and out of this hell before I know it.

“So what do we do?” This is something that always irritated me. She says that, but I know she already has her own plan of action that she won't want to debate or make any compromises on. That's tough shit this time around, because I'm not waiting any longer or following anyone else's plan without absolute guarantee of pay-off, and it so happens that my plan already entails an absolute guarantee.

What do _'we'_ do. I shrug and shake my head—not as surrender of my plan of action to her directing, but as an I-don't-know-what-the-hell-you're-going-to-do-but-I-know-what-I'm-going-to-do. Just a little more polite. Just enough to get her to fuck off. There's only so much humiliation my desperate state will effectively numb me against. As much as I genuinely resent her company, I still care enough to summon the last scraps of restraint within me and censor the utter horror I feel at the prospect of having her witness the coming transaction.

“You do what you want. I'm getting the fuck out of here.”

She's not happy with that answer, but all things considered, I'm demonstrating far more self-control than I would've thought possible. We've got no responsibilities to each other to tiptoe around, and now I've made the first move and knocked out whatever civility was hanging between us. Instead of narrowing her eyes with the usual judgment and biting her tongue until she's pierced the repressed words into it—where they can hang around and fester until the opportune moment comes up to use them against me—I hear the click of her high-heeled boots stepping in close pursuit behind me.

“There are qualities unique to you that I'll always like, Nick—admire, even. Love. But you have severe, _unrivaled_ problems when it comes to caring about other people.”

This hits me off guard. I feel hurt and disorientation, but no initial anger. Instead, it comes in a secondary wave. It's a defense mechanism. I'm not angry at what she said, but the fact that she said it. It's a shallow pain for a very deep injury. And I've got no real reply, which makes it all the worse. I just keep walking, shielding my face from the rain, and she just keeps following.

I fucking hate Roark right now.

“I know—your egocentrism reigns supreme and the rest of the world has a problem for operating on the heliocentric model. I'm just trying to understand why you wouldn't tell me about something this... big.” She pauses, ending on a note like she wants to choose the rest of her words with caution now that she's gotten insulting me out of the way. Twice. The silence drags like she's left me alone, but her footsteps are still trailing along. I need to figure something out to get rid of her in case she recognizes where I'm going. “Not even because I think you owe it to me, but _as a friend_.”

“I don't know what the fuck you want from me.” We're really pushing it now. I've reached the threshold; one more word, and the frayed threads just barely holding my patience in place are going to snap.

“I want you to stop running away from admitting what's been going on between you and Chris.”

I can't excuse those words leaving her mouth. It's _violating_. Every syllable is an intrusion. A contamination inserting her watchful, condemning eye into my memories. What is the point? What's the fucking point of this same shit— _all the same bullshit_ —over and over? I'm sick of shooting up, sick of sleeping, sick of not being able to shoot up, sick of not getting any sleep, sick of feeling the shifting, sharp cracks in my muscles and bones—the parallel cracks in my good judgment and self-esteem. I'm sick of being sick. I fucking hate her. I hate Chris. Mick. Gail. I fucking hate everyone that I know, and at this point I've got no clue what I'm doing here. I don't know what to say to her. I've stopped walking and so has she.

“It's fucking _insulting_ for you to keep denying it to me. For you to ignore me when I'm trying to understand.”

“ _What does that even mean?_ You're doing a service to me involving yourself in my shit? It's not your goddamn business to understand! It doesn't even matter anymore— _He's fucking someone else!_ It's over!”

There's a long silence. It's more like I've just screamed at a mountain-side and I'm waiting for the reverberation to reach up top and avalanche down on me than it is relieving.

The Christian guilt has set in. Facing her, an ex-lover, with the reality of my relationship with Chris, makes it seem like a friendship gone awry. Something tainted by sex and drugs. It makes me feel low and depraved. The context of this conversation is making me view it through her eyes as a long series of confused mistakes—like some kind of dysfunction. A perversion of something that could've been innocent and long-lived. Something bad that could've stayed good.

“Do you... need to talk?”

My hands go to the back of my neck, with my elbows at either side of my face. My eyes are screwed shut in frustration. I don't know what I'm doing anymore.

Why is it _this?_ Why does it have to be something I thought was so pure? Something that is pure—that's the only pure thing left in my life. Why does it have to be something that made me happy? I pawn my belongings, my friends' belongings, perform sexual favors on strangers, all in the name of heroin. I go about the routine of addiction with complete indifference, and now talking about the love affair I've been having with another guy is what finally makes me feel disgrace and disgust.

I turn around, let my arms drop to my sides, and I face her.

“Why don't you just _say it?_ Fucking _say_ what you're thinking.”

“Okay.” It's an open invitation and she doesn't dare miss a beat. I'm not surprised, but there's a very different undertone to this conversation than what I'm used to. You could call it honesty, I guess. It's blunt, but it seems she's doing her best to keep stringing together a careful choice of words. “Obviously, I've come into this at a bad time. I just... I know you. I don't want to undermine your relationship, but I'm having a hard time...”

She makes a face like the thought hasn't broken away from her so much as she's reminding herself what she can and can't say to me. Her make-up is running from the rain. With this outstretched gesture she does with her arms, she's pretty much asking me what else do I expect, and aren't I in awe with her polite calmness?

“I'm having a hard time with this in general. I mean, you came here so soon after we ended. I realize a lot has changed since we were together, but... I'm having a hard time believing this isn't some—some kind of phase.”

“Laugh if you want— _I really don't give a shit._ ”

“Am I laughing?”

“No, you're just fucking belittling the idea that I loved someone after you. Pardon me if I'm not ecstatic with this discussion.” I'm turning away from her again and, at first, it's just a way of expressing my anger, but before I can think on it I'm fleeing the conversation.

“I'm trying to be an open ear, but go ahead and be an asshole if you want. Just run away.” The click of her footsteps starts up again. “ _That's_ what you think this is about— _right_. Of course you love him, Nick. He's your friend. I just wonder if you're actually in love with him.”

“I _just told you_ it's over, so _lay the fuck off!_ ”

“No, I'm not going to _lay the fuck off_. It's not unreasonable for me to want to know what helped you forget about the years we were together so quickly that you moved here almost immediately after we broke up. I thought it was just the girls you were picking up on the side—apparently, you're not as reserved and ascetic as I've been thinking.”

This is really happening. She's going to follow me and she's going to talk the whole way.

“So what the fuck does that mean? Is _this_ the moment you're gonna _ask for a fucking apology?_ I didn't move here because I was seeing him on the side, if that's what you're saying to me. I hadn't even fucking met him until—”

“I don't want your apologies; I've gotten over you in my own time. As hard as it might be for you to understand, I want some _honesty_. For once in your fucking life.” This is _really happening._ I'm keeping focused on and moving in the direction of my destination. My hand flies to my face, then slides down to my neck, feeling until I find a long, horizontal cut, probably from Chris. “You're going to take the moral high ground on your new boyfriend fucking someone else? Well, at least he told you about it. That's more than you ever did for me. Somehow, I doubt you've been any better to him. The way that you go through people, toss people to the side, isn't fucking fair—not fair to him, not to me.”

Considering the only thing he still expects from me is to keep my fucking mouth shut about us in public, I could take any of the stray cinderblocks from the sidewalk right now and decimate everything in sight. I can't stand this. I slam my foot into a dented, metal trash can—half full with plastic bags and beer bottles—and it dominoes over the empty one beside it. They both roll out into the street, booming like thunder, where an on-coming car nearly hits them, only just missing with a violent swerve and several blares of its horn. Maybe out of disbelief or God answering my prayers, Anita says nothing until we're halfway down the block.

“I'm not walking on eggshells around it anymore. You're acting _psychotic_ and it is _seriously_ fucking _scaring_ people. I didn't go along with you and Roark for the fun of walking around the worst parts of Berlin at night in the rain to score second-rate junk from Lydia's Russian fugitive friend—”

“ _Yeah._ Yeah, _fucking sure._ ”

“—Well, you owe me something _now_ as _jackass tax_ , but I'm here because I'm scared for you. _I don't know what I'm supposed to think!_ I come by the show to see Gail; I find out you're not only sleeping with Chris, but he's hit rock-bottom with addiction and you're being _abusive_ to him. He looks like he just got out of a concentration camp, you _destroyed_ Gail's apartment, you punched _Mick_ —one of your best friends and the only one loyal enough to stick by you during this shit—and accused him of _having sex with Chris_. Do I really need to tell you how insane that sounds? Or should we run your theories by Katy and hear what she thinks? And then _you wonder_ why everyone's pissed off at you!”

come on, skinny love, just last the year  
pour a little salt, we were never here  
staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer  
I tell my love to wreck it all  
cut out all the ropes and let me fall 

  
_I come staggering through the front door with my equilibrium barely intact, carrying a bottle of German vodka by the neck. I'm soaked in sweat from the summer city heat and I can feel it rolling down my back. There's a light breeze now that the sun's gone down, but the humidity is unbearable._

_Mick's standing in the kitchen over the stove, attending to a pot of something that smells indistinguishably nice. Eager to get out of the heat, I slam the door behind me and stumble my way around the counter and over to the fridge. Without turning from the stove, he stares at me peripherally and cocks an eyebrow, shifting his weight from one foot to the other._

_My bedroom door's wide open and, from where I'm standing, I can seen Chris in a slouched-over heap, tangled with my sheets and blankets, fooling around with a tapeloop that probably belongs to Mark. The plan for tonight is obvious at this point. I'm embarrassed, and Mick's clearly just as embarrassed for me, but I'm also exhausted and out of ideas on how to escape being obvious._

_“I'm just...” I'm just so winded, the words don't want to come out. I heel-toe my shoes off and loiter in the makeshift air-conditioning of the open fridge door, waiting uncomfortably to get the first few lines of conversation out of the way. I throw my arm out toward my bedroom, sparing one finger from the bottle's neck to point at Chris. “We're going to work on...”_

_“I didn't ask.” Mick laughs and carries on stirring the contents of the pot. Good enough for me. I'm more than glad to drop the pleasantries and attempts at social politeness, but the thought finally strikes my thick skull: Mark._

_“Hey, is—” Before I can finish the thought, the click and squeak of a door opening echoes into the kitchen and I shut the fridge. Operating purely on nervous reactions that have little to do with rationality or logic, I'm all paranoid-caution, and I put the vodka down on the counter next to Mick before slinking over to the other side of him, posing to look as if we've been talking. He turns away from what I can now see is boiling pasta and stares dead on, as if to say, there aren't even words for him to tell me how ridiculous I'm behaving right now, but if there were, they'd be an understatement._

_“'Nick back yet?” It's Roark. Thank God it's Roark. Where the fuck did I put the vodka?_

_“Why would you even let Mark entertain the idea of moving in if you're going to act like this every night you want to spend—”_

_“_ —Mick, _hey now. Come on.”_

 _“_ —Spend time _together.”_

_I orbit around him to get to the cabinets past his head. Not in any mindset to respond, I circumnavigate both him and this remark to spin a shot glass toward me with one finger from a high shelf, doing my best not to elbow him in the face despite whatever temptation I might feel._

_Roark is walking up to the kitchen, eyes bright and excited. Leaning in from the living room, he folds his arms and spills his upper body over the counter, craning his neck to make a face at Mick's culinary skills._

_“Jax got straight.” He says this in his usual way of innocuousness over-played to the point of sounding suspect, intended to drive Mick up the wall with curiosity. This conversation's been had so many times, though, it's white noise to Mick; he's totally indifferent._

_“So, he 'get you sorted, finally?” I've got the vodka, the shot glass—we really only need one—but I'm lingering here awkwardly. It's no task to see Roark's starting to feel neglected; him wanting to make an evening of the usual debauchery like this almost feels nostalgic. My intentions aren't to dodge him, but it's getting annoying trying to get time alone with Chris. Unless he's got some especially good shit, I'm already well-stocked._

_“Maybe.” He lifts himself up from the counter and this comes out a grunt, promising an intriguing, secretive answer. Mick is shaking his head in silent disapproval, and Roark is quick to meet this with a roll of his eyes. I'm indicating with the angling of my whole body now that my bedroom door is the only direction I'm interested in going. Either he's not picking up on it, or he's trying to negotiate. He makes a face like we're pressed for time and cocks his head at his and Mick's door instead._

_“Raincheck?” This is about all I can think to offer; I motion toward my current entanglement with the shot glass. Ever snide, ever the smart ass, he sighs, shaking his head, and pulls his lip back in moderate disgust._

_“He's really got you at the crack of the whip. Don't remember it ever taking this much to soothe Anita's ego.” His expression is irate but otherwise stiff and difficult to read. He's scowling and won't look at me. I don't know if he's fucking around or not, but he's pissing me off._

_“I detect a hint of jealousy...” Mick says with sing-song relish._

_“_ Jealousy? _Yeah. My interpretation of spending time with Nick doesn't involve sucking his cock.”_

_I know Mark isn't back yet, but my racing heart ricochets into my throat and I could throttle both of them._

_“'The fact I was talking about Chris seems to have gone completely over your head, but nice Freudian slip. Thanks for the additional imagery—Now we know where your mind is.” Holding the heavy, steaming pot with both hands, Mick waddles the small distance across to the sink to ease it diagonally over the drain. A bit of bad luck for him, he's facing Roark directly now, and it doesn't require any further provocation for him to take a swipe across the counter. The weight of the water in the pot is apparently too much leverage in Roark's favor, and it tips totally horizontal, causing both the loss of a significant amount of pasta and the splash-back of boiling water on Mick's hands._

_“Whatever. I'll let Mick make the arrangements as far as the funeral for your manhood goes. I won't be attending, but I'll write a nice letter with my blessings.”_

_In no way entertained, Mick stares blankly ahead and holds the pot as Roark's tipped it in place. An uncomfortably long amount of time passes before he lets the whole thing drop into the sink. I really don't have the patience to tackle how out of character this all is for Roark—to be an asshole through action instead of words. I'm inching backward towards my bedroom instead._

_“I think you're on to something, Roark. You've been very effective in demonstrating it's much easier to soothe the neediness and ego of a woman than it is another man. Now you can be jealous and hungry.”_

_I'm through my door and slamming it behind me before I can hear Roark's response. I see Chris on my bed and my agitation quells almost instantly. He's in my clothes under the blankets—a plain, black shirt and a pair of my gray boxers. From the side, his legs are a white line from thigh to toe between the mess of blankets and the sheets under him. If I didn't know better, from the way the covers drape over him, it looks like his naked skin is only interrupted by the bunched corner of blanket around his waist. The stab of lust in my gut gives me total reassurance that I made the right decision in turning Roark down. I'd rather experience this natural high from my body first, unadulterated, and then augment it artificially after._

_He spots me, moves the tapeloop to the floor, twists around onto his back, and then leans off the edge of the bed upside-down, staring with a stupid grin. I have to go across the room to put my wallet, the shot glass, and the vodka down on the window sill, then back to the door to slide an overflowing hamper of laundry in front of it, and across again to the window. It's a precautionary routine I've forced myself into maybe a bit too late. We've been walked in on twice. Although we were only the middle of anything inappropriate once, that's still half-and-half, and it's still two times too many regardless of the situation. Roark's parents never made sure he grasped the concept of knocking, or something like that, to where he thinks it makes sense to ask if I need anything from the store when he bursts in and sees Chris on his knees in front of me._

_“I finished reading, um... the chapter four.” With his eyes all glassy and a huge smile plastered on his face, he laughs, unprovoked, with the kind of abandon that only comes from a bottle. If I wasn't already pleased just to have time alone with him, the prospect of talking about the book has multiplied it to where my face is hurting from the reflexive, happy expressions that just get stronger the more I try to subdue them._

_His unguarded giddiness and silliness make it easy to estimate how much he's had to drink. He reaches his hand out and makes a come-hither gesture with his finger, still hanging upside-down._

_“You're already pissed, aren't you?” I ask, adding my socks to the growing junk-collage that is my bedroom floor. It's becoming our bedroom floor, now. His boots and pants are in a heap at the foot of the bed, under a dead-spider tangle of belts. The drunk smile tenses into what might be a scowl if it didn't look like he were ready to laugh at any given moment. “You were supposed to wait, you prick.”_

_Now I can't stop smiling. We're so fucking stupid._

_“What're you talking about?” Every syllable comes out carefully muddled, one at a time, in thicker-than-usual German inflection. He rolls onto his stomach and watches me unbutton my shirt; his fake scowl starts turning up at the corners. My face is flushing. We've slept together maybe four times now, but the sexual tension still manages to intimidate me._

_“Di'you even leave any for me?” Leaning down to free my feet from the legs of my pants, I spot the empty wine bottle rolled halfway under the bed. It was practically full when I left. The feeling of his eyes on me is so overwhelming, I grab the wine and hold it up just to break the ice—for my own sake. He bursts into laughter—then I start laughing. I toss it to the side._

_“Why would I? You supposed were to be getting more.” However it is that his grammatical errors make me elated, I don't know, but I don't want to question a good thing._

_“So. Do you like it so far? Or... was the language still too hard to get through?” My stomach's lurching a little bit with nervous excitement; I've been waiting to know what he'd get out of reading it—if he'd see what I see in the story. I'm down to my underwear and my open shirt now. I go back over by the window to unscrew the cap from the vodka. Catching sight of myself in the glass panes, I leave the bottle unattended for a moment to smooth my hair back and brush it behind my ears._

_“What?”_

_“Um,” My innards are sinking. I'm staring into the shot and my voice is kind of trailing off. I knock it back with a grimace and no chaser, and then refill it for him a bit more hurried this time. I feel warm and light-headed and I almost want to check the proof on the bottle.“The Great Gatsby?”_

_“Oh!” He swings himself upright from the bed. I'm biting the inside of my cheek, smiling lips-closed and coy. I don't want to say how significant it is for me to know the way the words hit him—to know what his interpretations are, if anything. Maybe it's just because I'm aware that reading it is a lot more difficult for him with all the vocabulary and idiomatic and colloquial language. I can't even buy the right cigarettes in German without his help, so it's probably unreasonable to expect intricate literary analysis while he's just trying to keep up with and understand what's being said on a basic level._

_Whatever the case, I force my thoughts to heel and I sit down beside him, handing him the shot. His hand goes over mine to take it, but he doesn't let go. Instead, he uses it for leverage to reel himself into me for a soft kiss 'hello'. It'd stop there, but I take his chin, still hardly an inch from me, and I run a finger under his mouth before moving in for another, wetter taste of his lips—something he returns enthusiastically. Our noses touch. A shiver goes down my back and into my arms and legs; I'm clenching my fists not to touch him. Sometimes the worries still creep in that my affections exceed his. Sometimes I still forget there's an us—that he's not an unattainable fantasy anymore. I break the kiss and let the sides of our faces rest against one another, now in the perfect position for whispering._

_“So... Y'didn't have any trouble with it?”_

_“No, I am liking—I... Wait.” He sounds earnest, and he moves away to put the glass on the floor and start scrambling through the pile of his clothes until he comes up my weather-beaten paperback copy. “There are parts—I don't know how is being meant...”_

_I put my arm around him and dock my head on his shoulder. He leans against me, letting me pick up the slack where his sense of balance has been depleted._

_The expectations are still there. I can't help it—can't make them go away. Not only that, but they're still raised to the lofty heights I suspect are impossible to reach. I've got one eye watching him leaf through the pages, and I'm crushing the other shut against his collarbone. He smells like soap, red wine, cigarettes, and me. It's intoxicating—stronger than this ridiculous German liquor. The anticipation builds as I see tons of pencil-markings and scrap paper filed between various pages, full of jotted-down German notes, cryptic to me, and numbers of English words evidently cryptic to him: 'somnambulatory', 'supercilious', 'juxtaposition', ‘gonnegtion’, ‘roved’. He's against dog-earing pages, so it takes a bit of a search before he recognizes what he wants to show me._

_“Here. I'm not sure...” He underlines the first word of the sentence with his finger. Although I see where he wants me to start, he's jittery, as usual, and the book keeps moving enough that it's hard to concentrate. I reach the arm I've got on his back further around him until my hand is over his at the spine of the book. Touching him makes another little chill quake through me. The pages still and I bow my head forward so I'm literally reading over his shoulder. He loosens his hold, letting me keep the book steady, and instead puts his efforts into running a guiding finger under the text:_

__I'm the Sheik of Araby.  
Your love belongs to me.  
At night when you're asleep  
Into your tent I'll creep—— __

_As we read the words together, silent and synchronous, we're unknowingly honed in on a part of the chapter that I have personal ties to, and an excitement is triggered that flutters up and waits with a patient passion to be vocalized. The fact that he's not only inviting my involvement in his experience of reading the book, but also that it's during this particular excerpt, is making my pulse skyrocket._

_“Well...” I pause to organize my thoughts. My mind detours to some quote I heard or read about luck being 'when preparation meets opportunity'. I'm more than prepared to offer answers to any questions he might have, and I smile all the more at the opportunity to share my interpretations which will, almost certainly, impress him. “It's lyrics—It's a jazz song from the 20's. The kind Gatsby would maybe, probably play at one of his parties.”_

_I listen for signs of amusement, but there's nothing but his breath. Realizing I may be a little too excited, I settle for mutual comprehension instead. When I first pulled Fitzgerald off the shelf, he was put off by the language—decided it was too big of a jump in complexity from the poetry I'd shared before. But then he was expressly entertained to learn that the protagonist shares my name. It's an arguably irrelevant detail that seemed to be the deciding factor in his attempt to read the book in the first place. Maybe we should've stuck to the poetry._

_“Anyway. Well. I mean, the way the last two verses translate into the story. Um. I think it's meant as a kind of metaphor—”_

_“No, no—I understand what it's meaning about Gatsby and Daisy relationship...” I love his enthusiasm; the vibrancy of his language. When he can't find the words he needs, he does this rotation with his hand, like it'll speed up clockwork in his mind. “Like when he is leaving when knowing Daisy is at the door, and comes back around to... to pretend he is arriving. He is hiding himself, the way he is clever and making this act to charm her—he... yes, like a metaphor, um, the way he, to make her like him, he... As something else...”_

_“—Masquerades?” His face lights up when I say this—when the frightening similarities in the way we both think are made apparent. Additionally, I always find it cute whenever he tries to work in figures of speech he hears me use. I can't decide whether I should feel like an asshole for having done the disservice to him of expecting any of this to be over his head, or if I should start worrying about permanently wrinkling my face with smile lines._

_Clearly, he's satisfied with what he already had to drink while I was gone, so I take the shot from the floor and down it as he carries on excitedly._

_“Ja. As he uses other people, all centered around Daisy, and wanting to seem like an accident the way he tries to get to her. The Sheik, at night, to creep: I understand this is like how he is hiding himself in this way that he... he plays people. How he is hiding himself... Is—”_

_“Like camouflage?”_

_“Ja! Okay, I understand. But...” He pauses, sounding flustered that he failed to ask his question properly the first time. There's audible frustration while he looks for the right way to put it. How he phrases all this is so crass, it puts words to it I would've overlooked for their simplicity, that give it a sharper, clearer understanding in me, like he's taken the thought from my head. It's eerie. Whatever denial I've been able to entertain—in not knowing or even wanting to think about what to call what this friendship has changed into—it's just futile now. I can't reason it out and dismiss it. I can't apply any of the deceitful rationalizations I've thought up to explain us. Confused attraction, infatuation with a musical hero, friends with benefits, some sort of unconventional companionship in the artistic bond we share that's been clouded by drugs and sex. I've been lying to myself, hoping to fool myself, praying that this isn't the reality. But I'm captivated—_ utterly and completely in love with him. _“Just... who is singing?”_

_I'm not sure I've heard this correctly. After getting so carried away in my thoughts, I stop for a second and try to replay the sounds, notes, and patterns of what he said and pinpoint some other significance to them—something I probably missed while I was lost in my head._

_No such luck._

_“Singing?”_

_He nods with focused, interested flair._

_“Singing. Who's singing?” He repeats._

_“Metaphorically? You mean like the sounds of the city? Like—”_

_“Nein._ Who? _”_

_“There's... no one singing. Um.” Skimming over the phrasing that lead up to the excerpt with these lyrics, I understand why he might be confused. “No one's singing it. They're just lyrics.”_

_He's quiet for a second. His finger travels along the preceding lines of text, then stops, perplexed, like he's fitting puzzle pieces together. He makes a noise like he's about to say something, but seems to think better of it._

_“That was your question?” I can't help laughing a little as I say this. He closes the book and does a bit of a twist to lean into the crook of my arm, just so we can make eye-contact—face-to-face. Just so it's not like we're sitting next to each other on a bus or something anymore. The expression he's making has somehow welded a smirk together with this cross between amused annoyance and embarrassment._

_“It's really difficult reading in different language.” He says defensively, trying hard not to let the amusement we obviously both share betray the credibility of this justification. I'm giggling like an idiot._

_“No, there's nobody singing.” I repeat, letting my fit of laughter calm into lighthearted elation. He shrugs like it doesn't matter to him one way or another, but his smile is self-deprecatingly in on the joke._

_I'm full of liquid courage now, and I've still got him trapped in my arms—a loop around his waist, connected where we both hold the book up. I let it fall to the floor, and close both the circle and the space between us by embracing him. There's this burn from my throat to my groin—an excitement crawling all across my skin in waves like billions of tiny insects. For him. I really love that he's wearing my clothes._

_I lean in and brush my face against his cheek. He cranes his neck to trail after where my lips dodge past him. Only just catching on to this gentle chase, I ghost my nose over the smooth, sunken skin of his cheeks, turning to meet his lips at the last second for an open-mouth kiss. His tongue plays back against mine and all jokes made at his expense are forgotten._

_The subtle shift of weight when he lets my arms take on the job of keeping him upright feels like a cue, or at least some silent grant of permission. Without breaking the kiss, he brings one leg up onto the bed and tucks it underneath him. I tighten the hold I have on him, closing my arms to bring him against my stomach, until my hands reach his shoulders on either sides. His arms are trapped in front of him, up against my chest. I breach the collar of his shirt and start tracing up and down his neck with my fingertips. There's a barely audible noise of approval—a brief intermission where he takes a breath—and then the kiss deepens._

_I'm reaching one hand down to the small of his back, still stroking his neck with the other, tucking up into his hair and behind his ears. My fingers curl at the hem of the shirt, bunching it together to expose his skin. I don't know why, but every time we've been together physically, I've been timid and intimidated by the whole thing. I've let him do all the work—let him take on both the roles of being the passive recipient as well as the one initiating, directing, and taking charge of everything. This is a drastic break out of my comfort zone, but the desire I feel for him right now is overwhelming. It's my turn to please him._

_His teeth graze me a little and I pull away to rest my forehead against his. Egged on by his inviting body language and warmth, it takes a rush of nerves and a little tipsy courage, but I brush down from his back and reach under his waistband so that only my thumb sticks out. Taking my other hand from his shoulder, I slip it under the leg he has dangling off the bed and help him hook it around my waist. His newly freed arms go around me, holding on behind and under my open shirt. He tilts his head down and demonstrates his approval on my neck with soft, wet caresses from his lips. An erotic shiver strikes me and I don't need any more invitation to roam further south of his spine._

_My fingers stroke between the meeting of his thighs. He emits a sultry exhalation—not yet a moan, not any intelligible expression, but a subtle, involuntary escape of vowels when his breath is taken away. He stretches to lock the one leg more securely around me. When I touch him, there's the same burning excitement, melting now into my pelvis—which is pressed against his. I let the contours and lines of his body naturally guide the direction of my fingers. Slow. Easy. I can feel him shiver. He's all over my neck in appreciation, rolling my skin between his lips and teeth._

_It's another surge of sensual adrenaline before I find it in me to press a finger inside him. There's a hushed moan; this encouragement is enough for me and I let things freely escalate. Nestling into my shoulder, he takes a shuddering breath in, then lets it out, just as shakily. As my wrist works in its building, circular motion, he's brushing his lips and nose on my collarbone. The same current hits my spine, stronger this time, like his sounds, his touch, have some electric charge to them. I plant a kiss on his neck. My other hand leaves his leg to comb up through the back of his hair and tug, subtle and reserved—something I've learned that he loves._ _I didn't realize how fulfilling it would be just knowing that he enjoys this—just knowing that I'm giving him pleasure._

_The boxers are slipping just so slightly down his hips with the movements of my hand. He's plainly in appreciation of this. Massaging him lightly, the wet heat and pressure send me reeling with thoughts my modest reservations won't let me delve too much into—the restricted nature of which just make it all the more erotic and difficult to repress. We're both forcing closer to each other, making the stretch for our mouths to meet up. With the satisfaction he's taking from this, I follow an impulse to push another digit inside him. There's more friction and resistance than I was expecting, and a barely audible noise of surprise escapes him, held back to near silence and crushed into our kiss._

_I can't help being shy and awkward about all of this. I don't know if I've hurt him—I'm not used to the boundaries of his body or of being with him yet. I've done this with Anita, but it's different. A lot different from what I'm accustomed to. We've only reached the plateau of penetration once before, and I let him initiate and direct it all. I never had to think or worry when it came to going about things so as not to cause him any pain. Everything else has just been hands, mouths, fooling around. But it's different this time. Whether it was nervousness for not knowing what to expect from other people, or for not knowing what to expect from each other, the drive to go further has always been present but we always hit a wall. I'm unsure of myself—of what to do or not do with him. And I empathize that this is true for both of us. Even if he's more brave in experimenting with whatever this relationship is, neither of us have any real precedent or foundation to base what we're doing off of apart from our experiences with women._

_Though it feels illogical and somehow unfair to rival being intimate with him to being with Anita, I can't help it. It's not a flame I'm still carrying—the memories are just burned into me. They work as a filter through which I see everything I do with him. And, though there are still similarities on a basic level, they are undeniably two very different experiences. Being partner to someone of the same sex is much more intimidating, but that somehow contributes to the experience. It's new, unfamiliar territory. For me, his appeal doesn't come from the clichés of having a 'forbidden love'. I did not pursue Chris because he is a man; that detail simply became irrelevant._

_I was drawn to his person, and with every day and each moment that we spend together, what was initially infatuation quickly grows into affection and attachment. I know that it's happened, but I can't remember desiring anyone as much as I do him right now. I smooth my free hand over his knee, following to his thigh, then feeling further and further until my fingers breach up through the legs of his underwear; my underwear, that is. I'm teasing the idea of touching him, but I skip the delicate distance and rest my hand below his navel instead. Slowly, nimbly, I start rolling up his shirt; my shirt, that is. Our breathing is escalating together—mine from the careful multitasking and growing lust, and his from my wandering hands and fingers. I never realized how unhappy I was in my relationship with Anita until I found this happiness again, in him, and it feels fucking amazing. I push the hem above his chest, revealing him, pale and slender—working my other hand all the while. He retreats from me to strip the shirt, pulling it over his head and then tossing it to the floor, biting his lip to stifle whatever thrill he feels._

_It doesn't take much more than a coercive push with my weight to get him to ease down onto his back. His head lands just short of the pillow. Before I can lay on top of him, he slicks his palm with saliva and it goes between us and under my waistband. His reservations are clearly not as heavy of a restraint on him as are mine. With his legs still around me, the space closes as I'm pulled above him by the link of our mouths opening and closing against each other, and then he starts to touch me, drawing on what skill of movement he knows from lonely nights with himself. It's another wordless expression of the access to his body he's not only granting me, but anticipating and facilitating. I'm dumbstruck. It's like I've been waiting for us to reach this point for so long, he's already incapacitating me with this alone. I know we have been at this point, but I've never been the one to lead us here._

_My thoughts are marathoning, all on separate lines of the same track, in a chaos of competition and cooperation with each other. One branch races to keep elevating my breathing, my rushing blood, my lips against his, the movements of my hand beneath him. Another is straggling behind, trying to work out a strategy for how the former plans on getting any further with the total lack of preparation—protection, lubricant, any clue about what I'm doing. Another runs in circles, fretting over Murphy's Law. Then there's the most distracting one, just stunned in place by the deft, sliding grip he has around_ _me._

_The way his hand moves, he fluctuates between stalling and spurring on again, in sync with my fingers. Everything's accelerating—roughly, passionately. The boxer's have stretched down to his splayed thighs; he's pulled me out of mine. I break from his lips to set off on my own trail of appreciation down from his neck to his chest. In what I hope will be appreciated in turn, I coerce a third finger into him with a careful, deliberate flux of motions. There's a gasp and his head tilts back so all I see is his neck and the underside of his chin; this time, he's the one stunned. I can feel the breath I've taken from him in the halt of his chest's rise and fall, and I reach to cup the side of his face—to direct him back to me. He turns his head to my hand, then kisses blindly at my fingers. There's another falter in his touch—this time, it's long enough that we both notice, and he redresses the imbalance with these consuming flexes from his palm that leave me speechless._

_The muscles in my forearm are starting to burn. My stomach is in knots. Both my hands leave him, and his breath hitches yet again when I pull out. I start rolling the underwear down over his ankles. I slip out of his hand's reach, and he waits on his back in this eager state of tension and suspense. I've set my feet to work trying to kick and drag the blankets up over us. They reach as far as our knees before it becomes clear they're the wrong way round and twisted up to where it'll be impossible for me to monkey them over us. I sit up, planting one arm behind me for support, and I grab onto a corner and shake and pull until something comes loose. Victoriously, the blankets reach up over my shoulders—over us._

_My shirt is thrown off and then I'm scaling up from his navel, from his chest, until I can lay on his shoulder. With the warmth and intimacy of his chest against mine and the naked contours where his sides and hips meet around me, everything in me burns for him. I don't know what else to do and I can't stand any more hesitation—any more reserved wonder, any lust I'm too afraid to act on, only fantasizing what it'd be like to be inside him. I wet my hand with my spit and coat it over myself. Growing between us, I can feel that his yearning is no less than mine. My hands are sliding along the insides of his thighs, groping and easing them apart. He complies without question and crosses both his arms and legs over my back now._

_I'm sucking at his ear, his neck, the bony ridges of his shoulder. My arms dig underneath him, embracing his waist to pull us together. Breathing heavy, nervous beyond all hope, I press myself between his legs. I push and ease forward—ease into him. There's a surprised, delicate sound I've never heard him make before, and my head and stomach go off like a minefield. The pressure that envelops me is stunning. It's beyond whatever drunken memories I have intact from last time: the first time. He casts his head back, eyes shut, mouth open, and I follow suit with placating pecks at his bottom lip. He's recoiling and yet grabbing onto me tighter, unable to speak. The sound that's pressed from him is as if I've just shaken him from a dream._

_Whatever steps I took for preparation, it doesn't seem that they were enough. I can just barely move for the constriction, but it might as well be not at all thanks to the various, vivid, scenario-enacting fears playing through my head about the possible consequences of doing anything he isn't ready for—most of which involve trips to the emergency room. I have a feeling now for what a horrible mistake it was to try this without lubricant. He's breathless with shock. Slowly, I'm retreating from him, and his reactions are the same as they were to my entrance, if not greater and louder. I can't tell if it's out of pain or not. And then time freezes. The release leaves me longing for him far worse than before. Floating above him, I'm searching his face for guidance; for any clues at all. It must have been much easier for him to play the submissive role before when he was in the position of control. Now, he's caught his lip between his teeth, and the huge eyes under a forehead furrowed with apprehension tell no convincing tale of leadership. But, in a way, that's comforting._

_He rises from the mattress in a fight against gravity to whisper timid, wordless encouragement to my lips—to tell me he's just as nervous as I am; that, regardless, he wants it to happen just as much as I do. And I kiss him back. And there's sincerity in this—in the thin blue bordering his forever-dilated pupils; in the slept-in traces of eyeliner, thicker and darker on the right side; in his knees hanging at either sides of my waist—now obviously reluctant after attempt number one. There's sincerity in our shared fear. No, this wasn't planned out, and maybe that's part of why it means so much more._

_As frozen and stuck as my sense of time, I'm just watching the black circles of goldfish-wide and curious eyes that are waiting on my courage. He raises his legs to my waist, readjusting and securing our position when they close around me once again. In spite of his own anxieties, he's inviting me back to him. I hug him close and take a deep breath. My hips steer carefully, gently, inching into him. Our pace is at a crawl now, but, considering the youth of our physical relationship, that's probably as it should be. We're both holding our breath, probably too tense to even be attempting this again. It ends with a low moan—the same delicate, unfamiliar sound from before. It's an erotic click of voiced breath in his throat. His head lulls to the side, entranced once again by simply bracing himself for the experience._

_It still hurts for him. I can tell. It just wasn't like this before. At least that I can remember. When he was in charge, things went smoother. They were better thought-out. He didn't respond with this intensity, and I don't know if it's good or bad now or if maybe I'm being too aggressive. Before I can pose the question to myself of how to read him—of whether or not to stop—I push forward again on instinct, moving further into him, and his body buckles and his nails dig into my back with a gasp. It's enchanting to be able to see him reacting underneath me. Accompanying a shudder that wracks all through him, there's a massive sigh pitched in the key of complete overwhelm—a whisper wrenched from him that I can just barely make out:_ Nick.

_Even if it's still unspoken, I understand that stopping is the last thing he wants from me. Completely frightened, I push from my waist into some gentle movement, starting to rock back and forth with him—something that's maybe still too sudden of an escalation. He moans aloud to the room and my paranoia immediately kicks in. I silence him with my mouth over his, but the rest of me is continuing on with its own momentum. His body's heated response of arousal is more than encouraging. I'm off to a timid start trying not to become caught up in the moment, but he moves with me despite seeming otherwise debilitated, and he lets himself go pliant to my directing._

_My hips roll against his—he reaches, blind and spastic, one hand clutching at my shoulder, the other grazing through my scalp and feverishly guiding me deeper into the kiss, begging me to keep him quiet. His scent, the contact of his skin, the way I can feel every pant, every gasp, and how our mouths battle accordingly—euphoria's taken over and my thoughts are melting away fast. This is terrifying and wonderful._

_He wraps his arms around my neck—one hand still in my hair—and when my body drops down to push into him, his waist arches upward in sync. In some effort to keep communication going, his hold on me tightens when the pace goes beyond his comfort. I'm entranced and growing more winded by the second. My discipline wanes in turn, and his lips keep trailing away from mine, escaping to let out these amorous, desperate sounds. Likewise, I try to catch my breath in the breaks and follow after him, torn between pleading for him to be quiet, gasping for air, and feeling further arousal hearing the very noises I'm attempting to stop._

_As soon as we've locked into another kiss, self-control seems to leave along with the oxygen in my lungs. I'm thrusting a little faster, carelessly spurred on by the gratification his body is giving me in spite of the fact that his hold has almost reached the point of becoming suffocating—or that I can feel his nails in my shoulder and the back of my neck. I think I could be knocked over by these hard-hitting, increasing waves of pleasure, though, and I don't know how to slow down. Even though we're still moving together in a cooperative effort, he twists away to cry out, giving voice to some combination of bliss, carnality, and the discomfort that I keep ignoring._

_It's insane to think of when I first saw him on stage or when we were introduced. To think that someday we'd be here. I'm still panting and I whisper into his ear, quieting him with soft shushes instead. There's another whimper, but some force of action in response to me chokes it back. Trying to taper off the pace, I take a fistful of bedding beside him. I'm getting mixed signals now; in protest to the slowing, his body goes up to meet mine. I comply and another cry escapes._

_In what consolation I can offer, I kiss his cheek. The way he moves with me expresses this lust and desirous ecstasy derived from the whole act. I'm nearly in another realm thinking that this could be feeling as good for him as it is for me. In light of that, I don't know what to make of the moans and the tightening grip on my neck._

_Our stomachs are stuck together now by an adhesive of sweat. It requires some effort but I dig between us and take him into my hand. As much as this is canceling out my other efforts for silence, I care more about our mutual enjoyment than anything else. Still, the metronome of smacking of skin, my breathing, and him—it all seems too loud. He lets my neck go and takes the sheets above him instead, yanking a corner partway off the mattress in some restless display of satisfaction. Coupled with the sensations of taking me inside of him—with the unfamiliar act of being made love to—my touch is too much for him. The rhythm continues, though. My thighs collide with his while he presses upward in harmony—my hand moves between us, stroking the same gasps of appreciation from him. The blankets shift over us as a second, shared skin._

_We've arrived somewhere new—sailed through a storm. This roughed out, newly broken off experience has melted into erogenous androgyny. It doesn't make a difference what our roles are or whatever crude pain there was. Everything has turned to fiery, soft pleasure. He's genuinely enjoying however this feels for him, what I'm doing to him, and my chest is skittering fast enough for my head to take flight. Part of me wants this confirmed in words, but If I were to speak now, I'd be reaching out to a rain of vocabulary, blind in all the physical exertion. He's beautiful and it's burning in my pelvis, the pit of my stomach, my throat—both muscles and nerves._

_I've seized the headboard to retain my balance—my stamina. In perfect harmony, he's lifting himself onto his elbows and drawing his legs apart from me—for me. Neither of us can keep the sober focus or control to look at one another anymore. His head is cast back and to the side, with his whole body tensed and pulling away from what he's directing it to do. I can't find the energy or standing to continue moving and still do anything else but lay my forehead against the arm I've got on the bedpost._

_His hands both go to my waist and the sensual response in me is like electrocution. All my muscles are going stiff and inert. It's a wordless lead-in for us to move; no further directing is necessary. We twist away from one another until he's turned over onto his stomach. I hug his back, mimicking his bent arms with my embrace cast tight over him. When we ease together once again and I carefully make the third attempt to fit myself inside him, his feet and ankles overlap mine. Huddled with my face to his shoulder, I'm holding his wrists in some supportive effort. Every time our motion impels us to meet in this euphoric constriction and now-smoothed friction, his breath once again rises to an audible cry._

_I crawl a hand up to his throat, endearing the clean-shaven skin that sings for me just underneath. Another push forward means another moaning recoil, but I feel empathy now that his voice isn't the only one raising. I can only imagine how different the sensation is in itself for him with the change of position, but, regardless, no part of me wants to silence him anymore. I want to be able to make him cry out this way. I want to know the gratification I'm giving him._

_He claws the sheets into his fists, sighing fervidly—blissfully—and backing up against me for every thrust. The sense of his experience—his pleasure—is the most available to me in these cries and their vibrations that echo into my palm and fingers. He's sharing every bit of excitement and arousal that I feel in making love to him. I delight in hearing it, in feeling it, and shame can no longer touch me here. All the while, the driving muscles in my abdomen bolster the flow of our bodies together. Then, there's the touch of my stomach and his back. Skin against skin. The contrasting impetus of bold, desperate thrusts, and the subtle caresses of our tangled legs._

_His back arches—everything in him has tensed in a fight against the paralysis of his approaching climax. It takes me off guard. Body bucking, he buries his face in the bed to stifle the automatic response we both know is waiting dormant. The cries from before are rising in volume—coming loud and in sync with his breathing. Neither of us can focus enough to be quiet. As he squeezes my hand, near crippling, I can feel his toes curl beside my ankles. Feet unwillingly cramping and dragging the blankets into bunches, his knees lock, forcing down onto the mattress. I'm not even touching him anymore; I've hardly touched him. Neither of us have. He's on the last shreds of his energy and can just barely throw himself backward into my thrusts as some incitement for me to continue on—faster, harder. I've had no idea whatsoever that this could be enough to bring him to that peak of satisfaction. I clamp my arms down over his and pressure myself to his pace and past, holding onto him for leverage, trying now to push him to that point. The song of climax is exhausting into a delirious trill from the back of his throat; I'm following suit._

_With the long-awaited wayward cry, orgasm wracks his body. It's tangibly over-powering to a degree beyond what I can relate to. He's trembling in overexertion underneath me. That I've caused this—that I've given this to him—it's an exhilaration beyond anything I could've dreamed up. Not just a thrill, but some sublime stirring in me. I'm trying to keep up, but the intensity isn't dying. His moans are evolving into cries, quickening in pace the harder it gets for him to get any air into his lungs. Every last muscle in my legs and pelvis burns._

_In an uphill battle to tread on the heels of wherever he is, I reach underneath to take him in my hand and aid the acceleration of this build up. I'm both stunned and overwhelmed with thrill to find the sheets and his abdomen are already hot and wet from ejaculation. This has gone to its absolute height. Now we're just flying straight, unwavering on that level in its momentum. I start touching him and, with a loud moan, he actually shudders again—his nerves in complete, debilitating torment as this surges on and pushes him further._

_In a second, strenuous, sweat-dampened wave, he gives in practically screaming underneath me. He collapses spent and wearied to the core, panting, as if this final exclamation has freed him from shackles and handed back control of himself to breathe._

_My thoughts and pulse are rapid-firing. My arms are wrapping tighter around him. Any insecurities that might've inhibited me before I brought us to this point—questions of what to do with myself, whether to stop now that it's over for him—have all vanished, going along with this blindness to sensibility. He hasn't let go of my hand. I'm murmuring my affections to his neck now as he draws himself back to aid my motion in spite of his exhaustion. The thought of how he's permitting me to his body is too much. Climbing tooth and nail with spit and sweat, I bring myself closer to his ear, verging on the pinnacle—the cresting moment._

_This isn't like being with Anita or anyone else; it isn't like anything I've felt before. This is him and I._ Kindred souls. _Whatever you want to call it._

_There's this blissful avalanche like sand shifting down from my head, fluttering in my gut. I'm overpowered. Soaring on a sexual high above and beyond. Shuddering. Emptying into him. All of myself. Completely losing my coordination, my breath, my_ self _—all of it uprooted and blown away in a torrential surge of pleasure. All of it doubled by the thought that this is the same gratification I've just caused him._

_It leaves my mouth before I know what I'm saying._

_“_ Christian. _”_

_And then I collapse. My limbs give out beneath me and I fall on top of him. Apart from the short-winded aftershock stoned on adrenaline and endorphins, it's quiet between us. Not wanting to crush the air out of him, I shove off to his side, pulling the blankets up over him from where they were driven to a tangle at his waist. We both lie still for a moment, trying to catch our breath._

 _I reach out to touch his hand. He rolls around to face me—pale, clammy, lips flushed, smiling. His eyes are watering, limbs shaking almost as much as mine, and it's clear he still can barely breathe. With his head resting on his arms, hugging the pillow, his eyes coyly dodge the sight of me for the sheets instead. I don't know if he could ever have any idea of what I feel for him. All that I can hope is that he's thinking the same thing._

_I kiss him._

_This is one of those moments that has its own unique, signature emotions—a nameless feeling I know I won't experience in all its intensity until I view it in hindsight. Saying anything more would ruin it. His silent tongue agrees with me. We take each other into our arms—completely contented. Completely_ happy. __

_I want to stay here with him, like this, all night. But there's the restless scratching at the back of my mind that I've been setting aside and putting off all evening. Unfinished business that can't wait any longer._

_My legs are like rubber but I manage to crawl over the end of the mattress, trembling and unsteady. He's left with his arms in the empty spot where I fled from our embrace, and then he's gone from my vision as I dive—or stumble—to the floor. A miraculous act. Underneath my bed, there's numberless, ageless crap scattered everywhere; the dirt is sparse and cleared around one frequently visited spot with a bag containing all my gear, though. His head comes into distant view above the covers from where I sit. He's getting up._

_In spite of an intense case of vertigo, I work in blind ease through the ritualistic steps of matches, spoons, and substance—naked, nonetheless. My sense of urgency escalates: he's already stepped into the underwear from before and is now scavenging the ground for clothes, surprisingly more composed than me. Still damp all over with sweat, with the sight of his ejaculation on his stomach shining a little more than the rest of his waxy complexion._

_“You, um... leaving?”_

_These words call off the search party and he sits back down on the edge of the bed, rubbing his neck. He shrugs. I don't really have to ask; I can tell my shooting up in front of him is making him uncomfortable._

_“You are not minding if I sleep here again?”_

_Immediately, I shake my head._

_I'm still out of breath._

_There's something about his nomadic lifestyle, drifting from abandoned wreck to abandoned wreck, to friend's living room to friend's living room, that I find both romantic and sad. I know that he's accustomed to it, but the thought of him sleeping anywhere but my bed has lonely, cold, third-world connotations. I have to wonder if part of his infatuation with speed and staying awake days on end has anything to do with not wanting to have to look for a place to sleep. It is one way to gain another twenty-four hours without having to be a burden on friends._

_Him shooting up with me, then, sounds like a fitting reversal._

_“I kinda hoped you would...” I'm glad to have the task at hand to legitimately divert my attention from him. Otherwise, I get the feeling that shy children meeting again on the first day of school after summer-break would look less awkward. I keep wondering if his orgasms are usually that intense, but then I remember he's never done this with anyone else but me. He almost seems embarrassed about it. At this point, I know I must be blushing and I feel stupid even thinking about it to myself._

_In reply, he drops the shirt he found and lies back down. With an elastic band twisted around my fingers and the syringe between my teeth like a rose, I climb up after him._

_“This was not good idea.” Sometimes just hearing him speak makes me smile, but my heart sinks once I've registered what he's said. After all the commotion, we're whispering now. His hand brushes through my hair, fingers like the teeth of a comb—grazing against skin, making my scalp tingle. Confused, I'm stopped in my tracks and scanning him for answers. I spit out the needle to free my mouth for questioning. “For him to be moving in, I mean. Mark.”_

_The weight of worry lifts and I think I've just been annoyed for the first time with his English._

_“Don't worry about it.” I loop the band around his bicep. My arm is under his back, as numb and tingling as my head. He cradles himself against me, head on my chest, rising and falling together with every breath, with every beat._

_“You are not thinking that he would have heard?” He raises himself upright, hugging my stomach, and I move with him._

_“Maybe. If he did, why would he think anything of it? Or say anything to anybody?” I definitely think he heard, but I don't care and I don't want Chris to care. I twist the elastic and tie it off with another loop, pinching some of his skin by accident. I can always read from subtle signs that this hurts worse to him than the actual poke of the needle. I brush some stray hairs from his forehead, and sneak up behind his ear, with the wet, obvious words to dampen whatever flaring thoughts are running through his mind. “Make a fist.”_

_“I guess not.”_

_The needle pricks into his arm and as I carefully pull back on the plunger, a cloud of red rushes through the barrel, ascending like the wax in a lava-lamp. He makes a small noise of nearly erotic approval and his legs intertwine with mine. Redirecting my hold on his arm, I begin to massage the injection site with my thumb. The list of things that Mark doesn’t need to see, hear, or know about seems to be steadfastly growing, and I don’t need walking around with lumps and tracks on his arms added to Chris’s list of worries. The fewer reason for paranoia when he throws questionable side-ways glances at me, the better._

 _He's finally relaxing with the rush and he cracks a smile and his eyes begin to glaze over as they meet with mine. In a further attempt to sit upright, he falls sideways, angling over me, euphoric while I hold on to accommodate his drug-wilting body—managing to keep him from falling overboard. Our arms go around each other and I pull him close to me._

stolen crown, pillow down, all tangled in my hair  
evening gown, the lights downtown all dangle in the air  
crystal ball, padded walls, a bright blue TV glare  
a moth to light is as lost as I'm found, far down cellar stair  
the gates of heaven open and there is me on the silverscreen  
I hope they did good editing; bye-bye, baby, bye-bye  
hello to my beautiful mind; bye-bye, baby, bye-bye 

_ Roark _

  
_There's a TV on next door flashing blue frames out onto the gray, graffitied wall. Certain shapes and words in certain paints flare up with the glow. A Nietzsche quote jumps into the spotlight in loud red—_ Gott ist tot. _The words are scrawled on top of what might have been a mural at one point. They hang in the open mouth of what's now a heavily-tattooed whale._

_The fog has densed, but judging from the sterile whites and pastels that the few lit windows reveal, I can tell enough to know the neighboring building is probably some kind of clinic or hospital. The windows are all barred, though. Whether that's due to the area or the kinds of patients the place houses, it's difficult to say._

_Chris's sprawled out on the bed in front of me, face-up and out-cold. He's rising and falling subtly with every breath, looking emaciated and yet somehow alluring in the soft light from the nightstand. I'm on the bed across from him; whatever my feeble-minded friend was thinking, he booked a double. I guess he's imagined this will turn out as some kind of gang-bang slumber party._

_I snuff the stolen cigarette out short on the nightstand, then fish out my lighter from my jacket and set them both down nearest to Chris. It'll make for easy access later._

_I've had ample opportunity all night to mull over how to get the ridiculous puzzle of belts and buckles off of him. Perhaps he and Nick have practiced the riddle of stripping this garment from his waist enough for it to be routinely simple, but my pocket-knife will do the job just as well. Blade in-hand, I'm on auto-pilot and climbing onto the bed to straddle him before I can think much of it._

_With how thin he is, it's easy slipping the knife up along his abdomen from the hem of this thing around his midriff, whatever it's called. I can only describe it as part vest, part corset, all leather. Then there's the priest collar. Nick's got some real interesting taste. It takes some grueling twists and maneuvering of my arm to get the blade to stick up against the tightly fastened series of belts. I push my knees into the mattress and grab hold of his shoulder to give myself some standing or momentum. Pressing the handle brutally into his stomach, I strain my arm to drag the blade toward me in audible jerks, tearing into the connecting fabric beneath the belts and buckles from the top-down._

_He's starting to stir. The clothes are already worn down from homeless, drifter wear-and-tear, and after enough tugs, the cloth rips and the whole thing starts to come loose. The shreds are held in place at his waist by the belts, though, like rolled up newspaper, sopping wet and falling apart around a rubber-band at the middle. The 'sleeves' that go around his shoulders like a vest are weathered as is—they're unraveling and coming apart with the rest of it._

_All I keep thinking is, this is the body that Nick lays down to bed with every night. This is the territory—his territory—that he's intimately familiar with. He knows every freckle I'm seeing, every vein, every curve of bone, every invisible instance of asymmetry. It burns an angry fire in my gut to admit it and say this is what he makes love to. The flames are fed to an almost unbearable surge of emotions now that I'm feeling for myself that there is an extraordinary charm to Chris. He's alluring. Beautiful. I've recognized it before, sure, but not admitted it._

_I set the knife down beside him and start ripping cloth away with my hands. I pull his undershirt over his head and leave his arms caught in it, exposing his chest and stomach. The priest collar tags along and snags loose around his elbow. The belts are next; it makes the most sense to get them off manually and keep them around for other purposes. This idea I can thank Nick for, although my interpretation of bondage is going to be somewhat more literal than what Chris's used to. To start, I take one of the less beaten looking straps and bind it around his wrists and the tangled shirt. I push the end through the metal buckle and tug to fasten it, tight. There's no belt-holes this far down, though, so I pierce the metal through to make a new one._

_Being on top of him makes me feel closer to Nick, like I'm the peeping tom, the voyeur, peering in through a window closer than ever. I'm more than well acquainted with their physical relationship, thanks to living on the other side of the bedroom wall. The emotional availability and romance between them perhaps lacks any defined masculine-feminine specific parts to be played, but the rigid prevalence of roles in their sex life is, unfortunately, no secret to anyone with eyes or ears in the flat._

_Realization that the difficult part is done with just doesn't want to hit me yet. I yank his boots off—probably chaffing or twisting an ankle on the way. The question remains: how do I want him tied down?_

_Face-up. Definitely._

_The vigilant covertness, unwavering rules, and thoroughness that keep their relationship so private on the outside are weakened and utterly vulnerable at home, either after-hours or after the bedroom door closes. It's directly dependent on how much substance has been consumed. What value would someone accuse me of robbing Nick of tonight? The thing is, there's nothing here to rob; nothing to lament the loss of. We're talking about a toy. Certainly, there's no role-specific differentiation when they've gotten up the drunk courage to embrace each other on the couch, or engage in any other PDA's, but it's all appearance. When it's brought back to the bedroom, it's overt if not transparent knowledge that Chris always plays down—or bows down—to whatever Nick's insecure sense of masculinity needs to remain intact._

_He offers himself up to Nick as the submissive, obedient, soft effeminate. He gets off on the power dynamics, and it doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to arrive at that—to read into what all the restraints and belts and buckles and leather suggest. Publicly, they're partners; neutral collaborators and close friends. Privately, it's a perverted game of cat and mouse. One plays the masochistic subservient, the game to be chased, and the other the dominant, carnal authority; the sadist—the masculine role. It's a game. Art doesn't enter into it. He's a fucking play-thing, and you don't need an insurance policy on a yo-yo._

_Whether they've reached the point of recognition for it or not, when it comes down to it, Chris is an infatuation. He's the stand-in for the docile Australian women Nick has grown accustomed to. And it couldn't be more apt. What does he have to offer him? Let's count. He's an empty slate that can be projected onto. He is docile. Malleable. Weak and empty. Lowly. Easy. He's a piece of ass Nick's become hormonal and confused about desiring. Nick mistakes this vessel for sexual experimentation, which may have proven to be a personality break-through at some point, with love—with companionship. He doesn't see because he's drunk with the experience. Chris is nothing but a tool facilitating some repressed confusion or curiosity about his sexual identity._

_Chris is simply, truthfully, really: the_ faggot _. The_ kindle-wood _. The_ fuel _. He's the_ disposable means _, the_ ignition _, for Nick's fire—his realization. Perhaps that's worked in my favor, but he's outworn his welcome—overstepped his bounds, and forgotten his place. His role. He's disposable and his lingering presence is nothing more or less than beautiful garbage that has hung around too long past its expiration. Waste. Ash. Beautiful, but no longer serving any function or purpose whatsoever. He's superfluous. He's excessive. What I'm doing here is just one way of cleaning house. If anything, I'm doing Nick a favor._

go Rimbaud and go Johnny go and do the watusi  
shined open, coiled snakes, white and shiny, twirling and encircling  
our lives are now entwined, we will fall, yes, we're together twining  
I, that's how I, that's how I  
I died 

_ Chris _

  
Somehow, I've managed to avoid stumbling head-first into the toilet bowl and have merely emptied out my stomach yet again as intended. My knees are sore and skinned, but it's hard staying upright in anything more athletic than this position of prayer to the porcelain Gods. I throw my hand, knocking it into the handle to flush the toilet.

With my elbows still on the seat, I'm holding my rain-soaked head. The contrast of my wet clothes and the warm air in here is forcing me to connect on some level with my body—to pay attention and notice that I'm cold. They're not really my clothes. Everything but Nick's jacket feels unfamiliar on me. Mick has probably had enough time to order and finish a meal. I'd imagine he's getting ready to give up and leave, which would make life easier for me. I don't want to be around any of Roark's friends. There's some conspiracy to fuck with me; my instincts are warning me he's just waiting to get back in the car so he can drive someplace to leave me stranded.

Either way, the sooner he's gone, the sooner I can get a drink, which isn't going to happen in this dingy diner. Especially not with him taking his special interest in me.

Everything else is in slow motion, but my thoughts and my pulse are racing. I keep getting these weird dizzy spells along with odd stabbing pains in my gut. It burns, probably for food. There's one collective ache pulsing from all sides in my head. It's gotten so strong, it's taking the edge off my hacked and cleaved back. I don't know why I'm here other than the fact that I don't know what I'm doing at all in general. I'm trying save face in one way or another, I guess, but I've run out of energy and the whole thing has become counterproductive. I can't find it in me anymore to have shame about what Mick thinks or what he saw or what he knows. I'm just afraid what Nick is thinking.

Just now noticing the water-stains ringing the base of the toilet where it's attached to the wall, it swells in me that I need to get the fuck out of here. It takes heroic effort, but I get on my feet and push out of the stall, wanting desperately to sag to the floor the whole way. I'm thankful the bathroom is as narrow as it is, since it means it's only a few steps to the sink. I'm repulsed by facing the mirror, though. My hair's wet; my complexion is wasted and yellow-grey, all but for the red, moon-shaped dent in my forehead. I'm melting. Cold sweat and ice. Along with my general lack of color, it makes me look like a wax statue-replica of my skeleton, dressed up as my real self as a joke. There's what I see reflected back at me, and then there's what I know: the sin underneath that most people have the privilege of blindness to.

My hands tremor and refuse to move smoothly or with any direct purpose. Considering I can't use them to even turn the water on, washing up loses whatever point it would've had. I'm glad to lower myself to the tile instead. I need to think. Need a cigarette. _Need a drink._ There's vodka and vomit still on my tongue. Stale and dry.

I hate that Nick's frustrated with me; frustrated in general. He wants intimacy from me, but I'm terrified that I have nothing left to give him anymore—that I've been hollowed out. That it'll never be the same again. That Roark was right. I know this lost part of the equation in our relationship has contributed to his growing impatience; if it continues, I'm afraid I'll lose him. I _want_ to be able to have sex again—to be with him physically—but it's loneliness. It's weakness. There's no desire; only fear. None of it would have any meaning. I wouldn't even be there to experience it with him. Being together like this, while I'm in this state—it would debase the point. Worse yet, it'd prove Roark's case.

At the same time, I don't want this mistake to still carry its prominence in haunting me, either, in allowing it to continually remain my last sexual encounter. Allowing it to define me. I want Nick to be the last person to have been with me.

Pictures of him—of us, together—seasoned with what were once erotic triggers flip through my mind. But I don't feel anything.

While we're at it, my mind starts leafing through the rest of my memories.

I see that man again, asking if this is how Nick usually does me.

I don't feel anything.

I see Roark. _It's all you ever were to him. Once he can't fuck you anymore, you'll mean nothing. You're fucking nothing._

I don't feel anything.

The instinct is, you do what you have to do to survive. My life was on the line—I allowed this to be done to me.

What happens when these actions, these survival tactics, strip you of the desire to live? Is it irony and nothing more?

What happens if all it can ever be to me again is the litany of disgusting abuse—the marks left on my mind like disfigurements? What if he's not only eroded my relationship with Nick, but my sense of self?

In many ways, I brought it onto myself. I've been through this so many times, but the memory never wears down. A record that won't break. What did I do to get away? I gave in. Laid there. Cried. I let them.

There's only distaste and self-pity. I have too many gaps in my recollection of that night. Every time I think about him, about what he did to me—about what they both did to me—I'm faced with empty spots that are as hard as the memories. I don't want to know what else was done but I stretch to picture it anyway.

What if I can never feel like anything again other than _'the whore'_? And was that the plan? Could he really think of no other way to get me out of the picture than to completely fucking incapacitate me?

The thought breaks away, interrupted as my vision goes fuzzy. I'm rubbing my scalp and I can feel the bruise under my hair, about as large as my palm. He's going to leave me. He wants to already. Then all I'll have is this unfulfilled, abusive relationship with myself—something I can't walk away from. I have to fix this. At the same time, though, I both envy and pity him. We both need to run as far from me as possible.

I feel safe in here; in seclusion in general. The show stops. The actor can rest. I can stop parading about with all the effort and skill necessary to make the lie into reality. But rehearsal never ends. Even if I'm off-stage, my livelihood depends on practicing to pull off the act like it's the reality. The lines, demeanor, emphasis, and delivery all run through my head like I'm cramming for a test. And I'm burned out. Fucking exhausted.

I don't want to leave and yet I don't want to stay in here. I don't want to be alone and I don't want to face anyone. Way to be decisive. What a fucking joke—with me at the brunt of it. I'm forcing myself to my feet. Pushing through the door. My defenses are raising back up. Here comes the script; the mask; the armor.

Mick is immediately across from me, with his coat hanging over his folded arms and one knee pointing out from where he's kicked up against the wall behind him. The swelling around his eye has changed colors, but it's also gone down some. He bounds from the wall into position like some sort of guard dog and he's gesturing with his whole body in suggestion that we sprint down the hall, out the front door, and get back in his car before some invisible force steals the opportunity.

“Feeling any better?” This is a secondary, reflexive question. I can tell he's only aware of asking it after it comes out of his mouth, because he's already putting his hand on my back and shoving me along as if I've answered yes. It's set off a surge of adrenaline, and he's forced us to turn the corner before I can collect myself and back away. Walking in reverse, trying to escape, I nearly collide with a waiter. I've made the guy spill a pitcher of ice-water instead. It hits the floor with a splash, shatter, and the encore ring of a spinning tray that makes my teeth ache.

“ _Jesus Christ._ ” Mick's ducked to the side. Everyone in the diner has now had their attention drawn to me. With how he's staring at me, I must've just grown a conjoined twin with a mischievous streak on the side of my head. It's this silent question from his ever expressive eyes: _What the hell is wrong with you?_ I really don't know. _A lot of things._ The waiter hangs his head down at the mess and the soaked, lower half of his uniform—arms outstretched. Clearly, today wasn't going well for him before I entered into the picture.

“ _Entschuldig—_ ”

“Are you ordering something?” Assuming that I'm Australian as well, he cuts me off and almost spits enough venom on his words to acid-bath them into rhetoric. Almost, anyway. He seems to realize his mistake with the look he gives me—registering my native, city accent in retrospect—but the sneer never goes away, and Mick takes the remark onto himself before anything else can be said. Mick shakes his head—not in disagreement, but out of flustered resignation.

“Sure, I guess. Yeah. Some coffee.” He's crouching down now to help the guy get the glass off the floor. This is probably a familiar routine for him to the point of professionalism after this morning, but he's shooed away. The attitude has become: buy something and get out.

If I can't deal with someone putting their hand on my back—if my suspicions flare at every person who speaks to me—how the fuck am I going to control myself enough to be able to sleep with Nick again? I'm intimidated by both of them. It's a vicious, circular trap of instinctual panic. A fear stimulus prompts anxiety, then it becomes a regular interference with everyday functioning. Then the anxiety becomes its own fear stimulus for all the time spent dreading the dread that will be felt in unreasonably benign situations. Anxiety about having anxiety about having anxiety. But understanding it gets me no where in controlling it.

“Both?” It's not a challenge to imagine a few possible assumptions running through his mind. He looks a couple years older than us—blonde, scruffy but classically handsome. The contempt emanating from him makes the age difference hard to forget, however slight it might be. I did just wander in here to vomit in their bathroom, I do look thoroughly fucked up, I have used more than two illegal substances within the past twelve hours, and I definitely reek of alcohol, so I guess he can't be far off the mark. His only error would be in lumping Mick in with me.

“Yeah.” Mick answers before the question even penetrates my thoughts. I'd protest, but I'm at a point where I have to prioritize to conserve my energy. Not having coffee isn't that far up on my list. He looks to me, raising his eyebrows practically into his hairline to communicate something silent about this situation, but whatever he's trying to say, I can't decipher the body language. I'm just taking note of all the exits and going over what I'll do if he tries to out-power me. My attention is drawn when the waiter stands up, practically towering over me. He smooths his hair back and stares at the both of us. There's a name tag: Samm.

“Together?” This sounds innocuous, but he pulls his upper lip back to show his teeth and looks at me, as if to attribute the foul feeling in the room to some doing of mine. I'm slouching, making eye-contact exclusively with the broken glass. My gut bellows loud enough for them both to hear.

“What?” Mick says uneasily, confused or troubled by this guy's minute-long, unbroken glare at either of us. He seems offended, and I realize that the waiter is suggesting we're involved romantically. I don't really understand how or why he pieced that assumption together, but I don't care enough to think about it. Not knowing how to blurt out any socially-competent corrections, Mick shakes his head no and settles on his contradictory answer with strong, defensive hesitance that sounds more like a question: “Yeah?”

His eyebrows are pulled into an arrow now, pointing at the embarrassed agitation on the rest of his face. The guy just runs a hand over his stubble and makes a face that's more resignation to the cosmic forces responsible for bringing all manner of strange people and events into his day than it is a response to Mick. Given how unperceptive I am right now, I only know this because I'm already well acquainted with that look.

As if to ask us what we're waiting for, he waves violently at the selection of empty tables behind us. _Away with you weird, gay drug-fiends!_ Mick takes off toward the nearest booth, walking with his head swung round to watch the guy retreat to the kitchen.

“Do you want anything?” He asks—overbearing in his concern at this point—and he turns around to lower himself into the seat with the view of the kitchen. As much as I miss caffeine, I don't even want the coffee. I know it's going to make my stomach burn. From the look he's giving me, though, and the tone of his voice, I sense a negotiation is about to commence. This stems from the one-sided conversation we had in his car. His stream of: _Are you hungry? Do you want to eat something? You look famished. Do you want to stop and get food? We could stop here. You should try to keep your strength up,_ met with my apathetic head-shaking.

I've slipped into the booth and, once again, I shake my head. I'm staring into the backs of my folded hands, trying to think up a way out of this.

I'm well aware that I should eat something, but my appetite's been disabled. My stomach will gurgle and my body will give me other small and sometimes large signs that it needs food. I can sense that I'm hungry, but I gag and lack the incentive to eat. Right now, it growls at every five second interval, and burns, relentless. I want to eat, dearly, but my eyes won't stay open. I have nothing in my system to exert, nothing to keep me from collapsing, nothing to keep my energy up enough to try and start in the effort to expand my stomach again so that I can eat without vomiting. My throat has become non-permissible to food, and my brain convinced it has all the sustenance it needs from powder and pills. I'm aware of this being a falsehood, but now's not the time to correct it.

“Would you please try to eat something?”

“What happened to your eye?” Finding the courage to look up now, I can see I've taken him off guard.

He doesn't say anything. It's infuriating. Every time we approach a subject he doesn't like, he ignores me like I'm some confused child—a clueless object of pity.

“I'm going to ask you something that's gonna upset you.” He whispers, idly rearranging the silverware, measuring out the inflection on each word with care. He risks a glance at me, then withdraws back to his fork, knife, and spoon. “It's important, though, for both of us to get it straight.”

There's a fluttering, a palpitating all throughout my chest. I'm pulling the sleeves of Nick's jacket over my cold hands, hugging it to me like armor. My face gets warm and I can barely breathe. If he says another word, I'm going to have a panic attack. Or I'll pass out. Or both. I'm not sure what to expect, and now I'm actually hoping we're still talking about my weight.

The waiter comes up to the table and hovers around, carefully placing Mick's cup in front of him. Fear casts my head to the wall, seeking out refuge like an ostrich in the sand. Instead of some hole of a haven, I see a small, double-frame plaque hanging at eye level. On bottom, there's English writing. My vision flits to the top frame for answers. There's a painting—some monstrous fish with slick, fixed eyes and a golden-red underbelly. Its mouth is gaping for prey and it stares coldly from black gobs of pupils on top of jellied-sunset circles. A human foot trails just out of frame, inches from the beast's mouth. The creature's immensity lends some motion or urgency to the still picture; dynamic and doomed. There's a name engraved just between the two frames: Brandin. I understand the words beneath now.

_Jonah 1:17: But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights._

Having taken an eternity worse than fire and brimstone, _Samm_ tends to another mug before me. Without asking, he dilutes it with milk to some tan color and then walks away.

Mick clears his throat. There's a sigh, more distracted stirring of his coffee, and then he looks up at me with the same pitying, penetrating gaze.

I haven't eaten more than a mouthful at a time in over seventy hours, and my whole arm shakes as I lift the mug. I thought I could sleep off this exhaustion, but it goes deeper than food and rest. It aches in my bicep and the joints of my hand when I take a sip. I feel physically, mentally, and emotionally terminal.

“I'm not beating around the bush, 'cause there just isn't an easy way to ask this and I'm not about to insult you with bullshit. Gail said... you told her—” He folds his arms in anticipation of laying it all on the table. His voice drops even lower. “You told her you were raped.”

The words hit me like a one-ton weight in the chest, in my gut. Like the window beside me just shattered, I recoil and nearly drop the cup in a moment of weakness—my whole body jumping motionlessly, as if waking from dreams of falling. He looks down yet again, allowing me some dignity to wipe my eyes. It's mind-shattering hearing him say it. I think of several things to respond, but my throat has closed up. Each time I try to speak, my voice cracks and my eyes start watering. I'm shaking my head—not to deny it, but to express to him somehow that I physically can't say anything back to him. It doesn't matter, anyway. He can tell and he's already decided what he believes.

My fear, my emotional responses, had blown a circuit—they've been broken. They've left me in this powerless shell. Dark, blind, unaware of anything going on inside of me. Just as the numbness—stumbling around in the dark, trying to find where I stand—was becoming impossible, the power's come back. This sudden burst of emotion is so disorienting, so all-consuming and gripping, it physically hurts. It's like I'm seeing light for the first time in weeks.

It's been stopped up, clogged, building and building, and it's rushing out with such force after all this repression, it could knock me over. I try to fight through it, but I can't breathe. I'm going to have to ride it out.

After so much time in the dark—so much time spent feeling nothing—agony is a relief.

“I don't want you to feel like she betrayed your trust. She's worried about you—if anything, I insisted she tell me what was going on. But this isn't something you should be... carrying around, keeping to yourself.”

This is ridiculous. I can't get any words out. It's surreal—as though this is one of those dreams where you're being pursued and you can't run. I'm not simply becoming hysterical; my body _isn't responding to me_. I put the cup down, but nothing else is happening. He allows me yet another moment to compose myself, but I still can't escape the feeling I'll break down if I say anything—if I can say anything. I don't even know what to say. I've never even considered it.

“I mean... I get you wouldn't want me or whoever to know, but why haven't you told Nick? If this is what you meant by saying you were with somebody else...”

I ball my hand into a fist and press it over my mouth, breathing in deep and slow through my nose in effort to calm myself. It's pointless, though—I just keep shuddering. 'Why haven't I told Nick?' This is hilarious. It's striking how easy all of this is for him. To say these things that I've been internally contending with—that I've been tormented by since that night. They don't mean anything to him leaving his mouth.

“Are you really thinking he wouldn't be there for you if you told him? I mean, this really takes a lot for me to say right now, but he's not completely dense. He knows something's seriously wrong, and I think you'd be surprised if you—if you were honest with him. If you gave him a chance, at least. He can act like a _complete dick_ , yeah, but me and Roark have known him years and—”

A small cry leaves me. I have to take my face into my hand. I am not about to have this conversation with him. Maybe I'm paranoid, but the ambiance of clattering silverware and conversation sounds like it's quieted. I wipe my face once again, primping to look sober and sane, and I slide out of the booth using the table to guide myself like the banister on a staircase.

“Chris—”

There's nothing that's going to make me look back. The embarrassed violation swimming in my blood is too much. My hardened veneer is no sturdier than dried mud crumbling away now as my eyes water. Headed down the hallway, I can hear him stalking after. The cuts on my back feel like they're tearing open again with my movements as I walk. I've given myself a headrush from holding my breath and my vision is starting to dim. Before the vertigo can turn into blindness, I shove the door open and, letting my emotions amplify the action, I throw it with all the strength I have to slam it shut. Mick charges in, though, and catches it with his palms out in front of him.

“Look, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to...” The desperation in his voice peaks and then drops off into silence when I make it into the stall from before and rattle it shut and locked behind me. This disgusting public toilet and I are something of old friends now. _Back again?_ Apparently so. I'm resting my back against the door, both to secure it closed and to keep myself standing. “ _Chris,_ I didn't mean to upset you. I'm only... You're not—”

As soon as he's picked his composure up, it collapses his vexed words again. There's a clang when he kicks the neighboring stall that makes my stomach jump to my throat—literally. Stress has made a habit of hanging around my neck and shoulders, and I've reached the threshold where it's not possible for that region to tense any more. My body gags in shock just to give some sort of passage out to the fight-or-flight response. I'm choking—audibly. Tears have finally overpowered me. My face and chest strain to hold it back. I hug the wall closer and fix both hands over the lock. The hunger pains are gurgling and whining again, nagging at me to nourish myself with something. Even older pains are screaming at me to find a way out of this room.

I'm just so tired. I can't do this anymore.

He clears his throat. I can see his shoes outside, retiring with newfound patience in front of the stall.

“Okay. Obviously, I'm not versed in this kind of thing. I'm sorry if I upset you, and I can't say that enough, but... I understand— _no_ , well, I _don't_ understand, but I get why you don't want to talk about it. We don't have to talk here, or at all, but the way you're dealing with this—the way you're _not_ dealing with this—you're shooting yourself in the foot.”

What the fuck am I supposed to say back to him? What am I supposed to do? He's just ripped the barely-formed scab off me and now he's poking and prodding and digging at the mess underneath, asking me to explain why it hasn't healed.

“ _Please_ , just _go away._ ”


	8. Mirrors

> _"There was one person there whom he did not know and he could not bear him. Everything he said infuriated and disgusted him—his manner, his habits, his laziness, his insincere way of speaking, his facial expressions—and it seemed to him also that he could see into this man's thoughts and his feelings and all his secrets and, in fact, into all his life. He asked the others who this impossible man was. They answered: 'Up here we have very special **mirrors** which are quite different from those in your world. This man is yourself.'"_  
> 
> 
>   
>  Maurice Nicoll  
>  

> 
>   
> 

__ king Saul fell on his sword when it all went wrong  
and Joseph's brother sold him down the river for a song  
Raskalnikov felt sick but he couldn't say why  
when he saw his face reflected in his victim's twinkling eye  
some things you do for money and some you'll do for fun  
but the things you do for love are gonna come back to you  
one by one 

_ Roark _

  
“ _Her._ ” There's a neurotic thrill to the way he says this. After a few celebratory sneers and laughs over the idea that nothing gets past him, his face snaps to the straight, somber soldier at attention so abruptly, it unsettles me. Deeply. He's been lamenting a supposedly stolen nine-mil since I got here. Through paranoid, inductive reasoning, he's pinned the blame on his pregnant neighbor whose husband, I've gathered, was just incarcerated. Still glued to the door, his eye never leaves the peephole. There's a kind of thick, clear plastic—like something broken off of a riot shield—that he's holding up between his face and the door. _Through the looking glass;_ we're all mad here. “They always trying to take from me. _Always._ She think when she bring her baby, I don't notice.”

Something about his apartment smells like a veterinarian's office. The stench and overall lack of light is clouding my ability to reason. Despite the unpleasant sensual distractions, or maybe because of them, my mind is soaring. Gail most certainly knows about it. Mick knows enough. In all likelihood, I may as well add Mufti to the count. Of course, they wouldn't have let me leave if I'd been compromised, but grace periods shouldn't be taken as a comfort and wasted on relaxation. It's an opportunity to get ahead, not to fall neck-and-neck with your pursuers.

The binoculars he wears around his neck are dangling in pendulum motion from their strap, knocking lightly against the door. One hand is flat on the door alongside his clean-shaven face, keeping the plastic steady; the other is raised with no apparent purpose, and he pulls his heavily tattooed fingers into his palm one at a time with his thumb, cracking them individually—continuing over and over, long after the popping noise has long since stopped. One, two, three, four, four, three, two, one. It's an apt indication that there's nothing left to crack, in his joints or his mind. There's strange lettering, barbed wire, religious imagery, icons, skulls, and other odd symbols all over his hands and fingers. Prisoner's cufflinks are inked around either of his wrists. The letters on the back of the hand he has at the door seem to spell OMYT, but the accentuation of the shapes of the characters look more like Cyrillic script rather than the Latin alphabet..

I'm shifting in my seat on the middle cushion of his couch—which I can only describe as claw-footed and blood-stained—and I've pulled my hands into my lap. Just as a precaution. I don't want to touch anything I don't absolutely have to and wind up with whatever disease of the mind this guy's got.

I need to be logical about this. Fear lubricates the passage of ridiculous thoughts; it aids and abets ridiculous planning. The only _logical_ way to retaliate right now would be to talk to the three of them separately before Chris has an opportunity to say anything more. If he does say anything more, it's more likely than not that cowardice will keep my name clean. He might cry about Welsh whatever-the-fuck his name was. At most, he'll name a second anonymous assailant. There's a reason he's taken this vow of silence. What would pointing at me get him? A psychological evaluation.

“ _Whore!_ She takes and sends to her cunt husband!” He's out of breath standing there, consumed with rage. Thick blue veins are starting to pulse in his drug-thin jugular. Everything from the neck down is tattoos. Not full sleeves or anything blanketing his skin, but a barrage of them spread out all over. Something in his strong facial structure, all sunken and wasted from either addiction or illness, points clearly to his Russian heritage and the years taken away from him in prison. “She think I don't notice, when she comes to hand me mail and baby is running around.”

Two large, gaping eyes are drawn on either sides of his chest, adjacent to the collarbone above and beside the shoulders. I'm reminded that the last I was here, Lydia made mention of his prison escapades where he makeshift-shank razored his cellmate's eyes out. The guy got fed up with being raped on a regular basis and tried to call for help from one of the CO's. Taking his eyes was apparently a message about the prison population's views on the morality of being a tattle-tale. I wonder if that's what landed him in solitary. 

He turns from his spy-station to stare me down.

“ _I notice._ ” 

I can't tell if this is a proud remark on his aficionado skills that he's trying to reassure himself of by having me nod in agreement, or if it's a warning that everyone is suspect and he'll shoot me in the dick if I try to rip him off. Probably a bit of both.

One, two, three, four, four, three, two, one. His hand has let the plastic fall and now is on his gun.

Part of me suspects or hopes Mick's already gotten fed up and run off to Katy; I can wait to deal with him. But it's been too long since Nick shared his score with me. My thoughts are unsteady—my body can't reach any state of equanimity without its medicine. What's more, Nick is relying on me. This is the perfect opportunity to reinforce his separation from Chris and it's slipping away. _I'll be in and out._ My composure is starting to fold the more implausible this statement becomes. 

With his head out of the way, the light from the peephole cuts through the front room in a pinprick of a beam, flaring up hundreds of thousands of dust particles and whatever else is floating in this stale air. All but one of the windows are spray-painted black. The one that's been left alone with plain venetian blinds is, I presume, his second spy-station.

As erratic as he is, I've been noticing a pattern. We start with paranoid nonsense. It gets questioned, corrected, or proven wrong, and then his cognitions and emotions go into conflict. He won't alter his beliefs to suit the evidence, so his mind distorts the evidence to his beliefs. Suddenly, the world is out to get him and then he latches on to his neuroses and persists. It's an insane dance, but I think I can follow. I just have to keep on my toes. The sooner this shit he has going on with his neighbor gets settled, the sooner I can get back to Nick.

I clear my throat.

“What exactly is all that about, there, Greg?” I gesture carefully at the plastic on the floor. _Carefully._ Careful like the innocent minority who needs to reach for his wallet whilst squaring off with an armed cop.

My attention is divided between the pistol he's pulled from a brown, leather holster vest, and the 'stolen' one that's lying on the coffee table in front of me. It's next to the same rank mug of something that could've been milk at one point, same as it was last week. He's shaking so much, I don't know if I'm more concerned about pissing him off enough to shoot me or his hand slipping up and pulling the trigger by accident.

“I tell you twenty times, don't do _fucking English shit_ on my name. _Grigori!_ ” With spit spraying furiously, he slams the gun against the door-frame. There's red, wild provocation in his dinner-plate dilated eyes. The conversation outside stops. I can hear the neighbor's kid giggling and fake-meowing, still chasing some tenant's cat in a game, crawling up and down the steps. It probably belongs to one of the prostitutes down the hall.

“Okay, well... mate.” There's no point in even making the attempt and ending up pronouncing it wrong anyway. “What's the plastic for?”

He pauses. There's a complete change of face. His arms fall to his sides, relaxed. Like the outburst never happened. My thoughts fire back to the wordless encounter I had in the shoulder-bumping shuffle to get through the door with Greg's exiting customer: tall, dark, and ransoms-your-daughter. I know him from somewhere, and I'm sure that we're at least on a name-calling basis, but extenuating circumstances have caused something of a fog in my mind. I'd dismissed his glowering look—nastied by insomniac-circles—as ridicule or scorn connected to however it is we're familiar. Now I feel pretty confident in deeming it the mixed relief of the kamikaze who lived to tell the tale, met with pity for my dumb ass willfully walking into the oddity of an odyssey he'd just escaped. It was a cynical _'good luck'_ or, more likely, a wave good-bye. Dodging out the back alley-way exit was no doubt a conscious effort on his part to go the way shielded by spray-paint from Greg's binocular surveillance.

“My eye.” He says this matter-of-factly, like he's surprised I don't already know.

While I'm well aware the best decision in the name of survival would be to bite my tongue...

“I don't follow. S'that your prescription lens?” I realize after the words have left my mouth: curiosity killed the cat. Under normal circumstances, I might be hard-pressed to contain my amusement with myself. However, at this point, intimidation prevents me from cracking any smiles.

He coils up again. The veins are all still fat and throbbing, cling-wrapped to his drug-fried, yellow bones. 

“You and your _fucking..._ smart... _You are speaking shit to me._ ” He shakes his head, disgusted, staring—looking down on me yet again. We've just stepped up another plateau in psychosis as he jabs the gun in the direction of the door, wiggling it in emphasis, just to be on the safe side and make certain I'll pay attention to where he's pointing a loaded, lethal weapon. “For my eye! _The gun!_ If she try to shoot through the hole!”

The Pandora's Box of my decision-making is getting old. This man is absolutely insane. I'm desperate to get Nick sorted, certainly—to have him indebted to me—but I'm not playing tightrope-walker to do it. If I can get the hell out of here, I'll just go to Jack. It's another forty minutes walking from here, and the guy's a prick, but it's a fair cost to not deal with Norman fucking Bates.

“Oh. Of course. But don't you think she'd just...” I make a benign, twirling gesture with my wrist and belt out this thought as though it's just come to me on an outlandish whim. “Shoot through the door? Another part of the door?”

The face he meets this with reads like I may as well have asked him why he doesn't replace the wiring in all his electrical sockets with yogurt. Lucky me, whatever system of reasoning he's processing my words through has translated this as stupidity rather than the condescending questioning of his sanity that it actually is. I need to stay on my toes, keep this shit to myself until I get out of here. Lesson learned—asking the violent lunatic to reflect on and explain to me the rationality of his behavior is an unnecessary gamble.

“No.” He says finally, pulling his head back as though the bizarre inner-workings of my mind reflected in this question have actually caused him to be physically taken aback. The gun is vibrating in his jittery hand. One, two, three, four, four, three, two, one. “You put two bullets in head. You do always, to be sure.”

“Of course.” I've no idea how any of that is connected, but I'm certain that it has to do with eyeballs and I'm shaking my head and shrugging at the slip of absurdity on my part in having had any question about it. It's of great comfort to know how learned he is in the art of ocular-injury cause murder. Sheepishly, I open my hands, motioning at myself in that way of, oh, I don't know what ever I could have been thinking, so never you mind the whole thing.

Now comes the hard part: the fifty-fifty fork in the road that could have me leaving either intact and on foot, or in an ambulance with two bullets in my head if God or the universe decides on throwing a miracle my way. As an even greater comfort, he's pressing his ear to the door now and letting his wild eyes roam about the room, terrifyingly expressive of the madness beginning to brim to an overflowing boil in his otherwise empty skull. Do I bring his attention to the mysteriously returned gun on the table, or do I wait around until he decides to settle matters by having a confrontation with this woman?

Her child outside keeps laughing and making high-pitched nonsense sounds of amusement every time the cat meows. Before I can stop myself, I'm wondering if this kid's even old enough to speak. Right. Great. It's great to be emotionally invested now. Good on me.

Whatever is waiting for me at the end, I'm pretty much being veered down one path now at the mercy of the elements. I need to get him to notice the gun. I need to get him to notice it, but without drawing attention to it. I need to get him to notice the gun, without drawing attention to it, and while letting it come about naturally like it's his idea. It'll be a blow to his ego if I fuck up, and it's more than likely he'll distort the situation to convince himself I was the one who stole it.

His environment of filth and clutter is like camouflage to honing in on any one object. Far more than one of these things is not like the other. I need a way to get it to stick out to him. I need to _clear my head._ I need calm and concentration. But my anxiety is going through the roof watching his levels of lunacy fluctuate. He bounces from angry subject to angry subject, and the longer he focuses in on one, the further down rabbit hole we go. I need to keep throwing him rope—just a bit at a time. He's never escaping the mad spiral downward, but I can at least delay him from taking his pick between making the neighbors eat a few bullets or having me drink the curdled elixir that shrinks me into my grave.

It's like the psychosis excels in stages, but he can only hold on to one thought at a time. We're already at stage two with the nine-mil. I don't care to find out what the final stage is numbered as, or what it entails, for that matter.

Still at stage one with his name. Why not?

He's still at stage one with his name.

“Greg...” This could explode in my face, but the only idea I've got is to get him back on subject with _'doing English shit'_ on his name. Let's reboot, take a gamble, and say a prayer we don't make it to stage three.

His head flies from the door and he stretches away from it like he's doing vertical push-ups.

One, two, three, four, four, three, two, one. Abort mission. _Abort mission._

“ _Do you fuck with me?_ ” There's disbelief in his voice too concentrated to leave much room for outrage-content. Nothing but a few moments of silence holds him back from walking over to me in great, angry strides. I don't know how the hell what was supposed to be a routine transaction has metamorphosed into this trench warfare.

“Right. Sorry about that, mate.”

He cocks the gun. I'm now directing my cross-eyed apologies to the muzzle, about three finger-breadths from my face.

“I am not _your fucking mate_. There is no one here called _Greg_ , Roark. If you would like to be speaking to ghosts, _Roark_ , I can help you being on your way there, _Roark._ ” His voice is doubling in volume with each sentence. My heart is in my throat, my stomach has sunk to the floor, and my mind is jumping way the fuck out of my skull. “ _I... do not... fucking..._ disrespect _you, Roark!_ ”

The hollow metal of the barrel’s end is pressing into the bridge of my nose. He's wrenching a handful of my hair from the top of my head, directing me to the gun in my face in case I hadn't already noticed. We've just jumped a shortcut to stage three.

“ _Grigori!_ ” He's screaming. There's dead silence apart from this that makes the whole thing seem all the more life-threatening. If they hadn't already, his neighbors have retreated into their respective apartments. “ _You will say it!_ ”

I am fucking trembling.

“ _Grigori._ I'm sorry, Grigori. _I apologize_. I apologize—I didn't mean any disrespect.” The grip on my hair isn't loosening. It should've been obvious a bleeding heart wouldn't be anything but fatal. My eyes are shut and I can feel every drug-soaked wave of a tremor that shakes his hand, directly in the gun that's resting on my nose. A memory strikes me of Lydia claiming his _'shit is to die for'_. I beg to differ. “Grigori—I was only joking. I'm sorry. I won't...”

I won't what? I won't be doing anything. I'm going to have two bullets in my head.

Why the fuck would she ever bring me here?

“ _Joking?_ ”

“ _Yes._ It was a joke. _I'm sorry._ I'm sorry, I, I—”

“A joke?” We've just come full circle. The pressure of the metal's left. He's let go of my head. I feel like I've had two enormous weights cut from my body and I'm light enough that I'll drift into the ceiling. He's back to using his inside-voice, and all the accusing animosity has left without a trace. Like it never happened. Again. He thinks about all of this for a minute, scratching his head with the gun, and then he chuckles to himself. “You were having joke with me?”

Standing there in front of me, he puts his hands on his hips, letting the gun hang casually from his hand. I'm shaking and I'm pretty sure all of the blood has evacuated from the surface of my skin, up into my brain's fear center and down to the adrenal glands in my gut. 

“You make a joke.” _He's laughing._ Like a complex punchline has just clicked with him. He starts in with his fingers again—one, two, three, four, four, three, two, one.

_What the fuck just happened?_

He continues on laughing, sincere and from his stomach.

“You should have say this in first place! You have any idea how _close_ I was to killing you?”

My face is stuck in a skin-stretching expression of horror, and my nerves are so overloaded, my mouth has made the independent decision to start smiling. 

“...Two bullets?”

He doubles over with his hands on his knees, finding this whole thing increasingly hilarious to the point that he's beginning to tear up.

“You make another joke!”

I'm grinning, utterly terrified and nodding with enthusiasm. My chest is moving in convulsions and it rises through my vocal chords, exiting as delirious, nervous giggling. It's not voluntary, but laughing with him is probably the smartest thing I can do at this point.

“I need—Can I...” This reflexive mirth lingers on, unwanted, interrupting my speech the same as if I were hiccuping. He shoots up straight, wipes his watering eyes, and he grabs my shoulder. I'm going to have a heart attack. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“I like you, Roark!” My eyes are blown wide like a deer in headlights. He pats my shoulder, then my back. I can't stop thinking: I almost died. But I just keep laughing and nodding yes, hoping he doesn't change his mind about any of this. He lets out an elated sigh, vocalizing the near end to this comedy intermission, and then points vaguely behind me. “It is in back, on the other side of hall.”

I rise to my feet, careful not to turn my back to him. There's a moment's delay where I can't move my legs to walk that probably runs just under the limit in spooking him. But it passes. Then everything goes blank. I'm in the hall turning a doorknob when my mind returns. Nick flashes through my thoughts and I don't understand why. With all hesitation gone, I shut the door and drop to my knees on grimy tile in front of a yellowed toilet. It has rings like a fucking tree. I keep my hands to myself, crossed over my abdomen, and my body needs no further prompting to puke up a burning throatful of red wine and stomach juices.

_Shit._

__ that old alarm clock gives a yell starting another day in hell  
passing a world I can't face with you gone  
in the mirror I see someone to choose to be me  
and I turn blue in the cold grey light of dawn  
the neon light and the jukebox help to ease me through the night  
I lean hard on the bottle 'til I no longer stand upright  


_ Nick _

  
This silence is worse than if she'd just make some fucking snide remark. It's really not a lot to ask for. Not after she lectured me all the way here in the one-sided fashion of taking her disobedient dog that pissed all over the floor for a punishment-walk of shame. We're fast passing the other possible locations on the block I could've been taking us to—liquor store, petrol station—and fast approaching an infamously and unofficially gay nightclub on the corner.

The wind is picking up and I think the inside of my nose could be frostbitten at this point into the evening. Morning. What times is it? Two? Three?

It's just one more block. One more block of venting steam like a train. A train that's running off company-schedule to smuggle contraband. And I'm being tailed, as if the sort of business I'm looking to do is where my troubles are rooted. What a way to have the engine-powered cart in front of the horse, and drag the creature along to a slow death of road-burned shreds. That's the strength of addiction. It's a well fucking oiled machine.

“You really won't shut the fuck up, will you?” In hindsight, my enthused insecurity isn't very well hidden by all of a sudden cracking a joke. It doesn't do a lot to make up for the on-purpose or the unplanned rudeness that was meant to get her to stop following me, either. But, at this point, the cold-shoulder is unbearable and I'll opt for anything over it. Privacy or peace haven't exactly been won from my other bright ideas. All I have to show for those is a round-the-clock twitch in my left eye. Over my shoulder, I can see her shrugging complacently with her hands in her pockets, staring at the patches of pavement muddied down into view between all the snow and rain. She's confused—that much is obvious. Rightfully so, I guess.

“You didn't seem to enjoy what I had to say so much before. 'Thought it best not to annoy you into causing another car accident.” This last part comes out stiff and smug, keeping her teeth together until a few seconds have had a chance to hang around and taunt me in the air. Then, she cocks her jaw open in something that falls short of disgust; there's a pinch too much patronizing pity in it. Her breath billows out as counterfeit smoke, bustling some memories of us sharing lipstick stained, post-sex cigarettes. I avert my gaze like I've just seen something dirty. “I'll pass on involving myself in any manslaughter-by-trashcan trials, thanks.”

When it comes down to it, there's dread rising in me with the looming possibility that all she's said is true. Considering the alienation and embarrassment I feel going into this place, I have to wonder if maybe Chris and I did misread what was really just an oddity of a friendship. There's a bizarre tension to being so alike, to so fully enjoying another person's company; the incomprehensible, once-in-a-lifetime rareness of finding someone who doesn't inevitably make you feel more alone by being around them. If that is true, I don't have the capacity to think about how badly what that connection could've been has been screwed. The idea that we ruined it is already too much even without thinking that I've lost him as my best friend on top of that, as well.

“Excuse me. Let me go put everything on hold so I can dazzle you with conversation.” My mouth is forever in argument with my senses. Some black and white flyers advertising tonight's acts pepper the brick wall, with a flurry of duct-taped copies all the way from the previous building to the door at the corner. I don't recognize the bands and I don't care.

The club's neon logo is flickering from its hanging post above the door—a closed circle with three vertical lines contained in the center, pointing up at three corresponding dots. The center line keeps buzzing in and out.

She laughs.

“ _I'm_ the one looking for conversation now, am I?—”

When I pull the door open for her, a cacophony of sound pours out. There's some lush buzz of electronic music I know I've heard but can't place; the eerie, church-hymn mass conversation chant and sing-along to the speakers; and then some bloke reading poetry over a mic in nasal monotone. She loiters in the snow with her boots together, looking up at me. Her head is bowed and a penciled eyebrow arches, suspicious—if not apprehensive—of my mood swings and sudden graciousness to include her in my business.

“You followed me all the fucking way here. Now you're not coming inside?”

“How about you stop fucking swearing at me?” She reaches around me to hold the door herself, then gestures in a mock-masculine, chivalrous _after you_ bow. It's a waste of time and energy that I don't have to stand here and argue. Rolling my eyes all the way, I proceed into the dankly lit cloud of sweat, alcohol, and perfume, and all its thundering.

There's swarms of people, some sitting at tables or the bar, some in front of the circular, low-rising stage in the center of the place that doubles as a dance floor. Most of them are in visibly gender-segregated groups and pairs, testament to the club's reputation. The current show that's drawn a halfway-enthused straggling of people is the same flat, English voice, which I can now see comes from a character with sunglasses and an electrocuted mass of hair, black-spraypainted in place and almost bigger than his head.

“Do us all a favor, here, wear this polythene bag. You're like a dose of _scabies_ —I've got you under my skin. You make life a fairy tale: _Grimm._ ” He's holding heavily creased sheets of paper and you can't tell whether he's reading them or just holding them as a prop, staring vacantly through to the floor. He bends his knees and drags his British drawl like painful, stretching torture when he wants to emphasize a word, since he doesn't leave any breaks or pauses between lines. It's rapid auctioneer delivery. The stuffy-nosed way he talks reminds me of Roark and I think I'd like to strap someone into a stretching rack right about now. I can't help some amusement at how apt the poem is, even in the face of all this shit. Especially in the face of all this shit. “People mention _murder_ the moment you arrive. I'd consider killing you if I thought you were alive. You've got this slippery quality—it makes me think of _phlegm_ —and a _dual personality_. I hate both of them.”

It takes a special kind of bastard to bail on your friends in dire fucking times of need. The whole thing seems staged now—playing best-buddies with me, asking Anita to come along. All he cares about is the goddamn needle in his arm. He led me delicately along to a supposed escape—listening to me vent, practically holding my hand the whole way—and all throughout, the only thing he was thinking was how much cash he could get Anita to fork over.

My thoughts hit a screeching halt. The familiarity in the what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you sermon clicks. They're Mick's words, and the inner narrative is now coming in his voice. _You fucking psychotic, self-righteous prick!_ I have to sever myself from climbing up my brainstem any higher with the rising guilt. Right now, it's a lightning rod for self-destructive urges. It's wise to try to disassociate from my memory; I'd have to be brain-dead anyway to forget the things I've done. Brain-dead or very, very fucked up.

Meanwhile, back in reality, I've been grinding my teeth like my escape from remorse depends on it. I force myself to loosen up the tension and just stare ahead to the bar. The hallway's right beside it.

There's an intense pressure on my back—I'm stumbling forward. I nearly hit the floor with my knees, but there's a bounce-back when I find my footing. I lock my legs straight. Anita's clinging to my arm. What's either a transvestite or an Amazon woman is drunkenly using her as an anchor to halt himself in the spinning seasickness of liquor and laughter. I pull her away from the wasted, giggling wreck before his blonde wig and fishnets snag on the zipper of her coat and we have to lose ten minutes to untangling everyone.

_“Like a death at a birthday party, you ruin all the fun. Like a sucked and spat our Smartie, you're no use to anyone.”_

The guy topples over, straight into me—stepping on my foot with a stiletto heel. He grabs me by the shirt. 

“ _Wie heißt du?_ ” His skimpy dress is wet with something that I wish I didn't have to be violated with considering what it is. Hopefully booze; if I'm lucky, sweat. Considering the rank stench assaulting the nostrils of everyone in a five foot radius of him, I'd say there's a bit of both mixed in with another, far more unsanitary mystery fluid. “Do you want to see my submarine?”

I'm momentarily frozen in disbelief as he's laughing in my face. This is ranking pretty far up on my list for the worst drunk-breath I've ever had the horror of being invaded with. There's a smear of lipstick in the middle of his teeth, and he's holding a finger out to me, offering a free acid tab. He sticks his tongue out, gawking somewhere in my general direction with pupils blown up like balloons. Cartoon black has inflated what I'm guessing would be brown if not for the Beatles clichéd LSD. I'm running on reflexes, not reason, and I shove the guy with enough force that he falls over the other way, hitting the floor like a timbering tree that's changed its direction.

_“You went to a progressive psychiatrist; he recommended suicide, before scratching your bad name off his list and pointin' the way outside.”_

“Jesus fucking Christ.” I'm leading Anita by the arm, aggressively cutting a calculated path with my shoulder through the forest of trashed psychopaths. Thankfully, she's speechless. Whatever wishes occupied me before for the silence to end, I take them all back. Everything in me wants to blurt out that I only even know where this place is, let alone have I ever been inside of it, because Chris works at the bar. At least, he did before he started bringing all the liquor home and stopped showing up. Who the fuck knows now.

The pain that goes along with thinking about him is not some emotionally purging process tearing through to matured understanding. This isn't metamorphosis into a butterfly, or the taste of acrid medicine to heal fresh wounds or kill the tumor that is our relationship. He's poisoning my thoughts.

If it's not enough that my senses of fear, guilt, shame, and anger all spike in exposure to him, Anita plays catalyst to the venom—because she's right. Intoxication was the gateway into Chris and I having sex. We were drunk and stoned the first time. It wouldn't have happened otherwise and sober guilt followed in the morning. A knot twists my stomach thinking about how absolutely _smug_ that'd make her to know. We both woke up ashamed, confused—naked in the truest sense. There had been this mutual tension from both of us having filled our lives with so many empty vessels to drive out loneliness, to where actually finding someone to truly love and relate to was a mindfuck—something we just never encountered, that we didn't know what to do with. That reciprocated dilemma of not being able to understand our feelings about each other built until it ran over—until it was overflown. There was shame and distress and confusion when it happened, but we were wasted. We were numb to whatever cues we were getting that something didn't sit right. Maybe the fact that the dilemma was so mutual is what it made it feel right.

We didn't address it until that point, and maybe it did drift into the wrong path of action. Blind, drunk action, no better than these unhinged freaks.

_“What kind of creature bore you? Was it some kind of_ bat? _They can't find a good word for you, but I can:_ twat. _”_

Applause and drunken shouting rains through the club. Then it's the ceremonious post-gig clanging of bottles and the manifested migraine that channels through forty conversations going on at once.

It's not a minute before the guy clears off stage and the house music picks up into full volume; an electronic snare starts in at waltzing tempo. The evening resumes. I'm maneuvering us through the crowd at about the same pace of the song, on the look-out for any more shit-faced crossdressers.

Have I really confused 'love for' with 'in love'?

I don't know. I think about him and I still feel this possessiveness. I'm still attracted to him. I still love him. It's so strong, it's territorial. _I don't fucking know._ Even if I left him, the thought of anyone else having him ignites these flares of jealousy and rage. Without my feelings for him, I guess that what he did couldn't hurt me. I lust for him, still, even with how he's wasted away, bone-thin to the point that it looks fragile and painful. Even with how many times I've tried with him and been shot down. Even given the fact that every time I try to be there for him he flips the fuck out on me, and the moment I'm not he cries victim. I still want him to desire me. I want that passion shared; I want to still eclipse everybody else for him. But there's someone else. I need to get it through my fucking skull.

He isn't going to tell me we've come to an end. Not only that, but the person who it rips my insides to shreds to think about sharing doesn't exist anymore. Maybe he never did. 

“ _Nick._ ” 

She's decided to stop dead in the middle of the bar, right in front of a booth where some walking goth stereotype was about to slide out, probably headed to the restroom. It's a game of fucking tug-o'-war. We struggle out of the guy's way, but only due to some level of socially-conscientious cooperation so he doesn't piss himself or throw up on either of us. Hope for the best; expect the worst. This is the best advice I could really give her, but she seems to have gathered that much on her own.

I can't place it but I know this song. A high-key wind instrument seeps scales fluidly into the beat, beaming notes with poppy melancholy. There's a keyboard complementing it with low notes in the background, and the combination manages to thaw whatever mechanized impersonality goes hand-in-hand with using a drum machine.

Now, she fastens herself to me as my ball and chain. We're not going to budge together so I let go of her. Like I've snagged my skin on a thorny branch, though, she's locking her hold on my arm by means of maiming and bloodshed, with her rings and manicured nails digging deep. 

“What are we _doing here?_ ” She's teeter-tottering on her wits' end. Frantic.

“You're _hurting my arm._ ” I rip away from her to nurse the scratches against my chest, providing support in a makeshift sling with my unharmed hand. She rolls her eyes—throws them up as another way of groaning: _'melodrama'_. As much as my arm does actually hurt, this display is a piss-poor excuse to stand around and survey the rest of the bar. Bettina Köster is sitting on a bar-stool across from us. “I'm here because I need to see Marc. You're here because you followed me.”

She's accompanied by a small group, most of which I recognize as being mutual acquaintances from Gail and Chris's circle. Grabbing Anita's arm and taking a running start toward the hall is the next best reflex that jumps out at me after the instinct to cover my face. Or the third best after hiding under a table. I can only hope Bettina didn't see me, and, if she did, that she hasn't spoken to Gail since I took my frustrations out on their living room. Retreat feels like a stupid move either way. I'm just drawing attention to myself. A public meltdown isn't something my image can get away with intact right now.

There's not much for Anita to do in the way of resisting. I've nearly tripped her up on the thin heels of her boots. She's skidding along, trying to keep from falling.

“Marc _who?_ ”

“Take a stab in dark.”

It's a small victory now that I've gotten us to the hallway, but the door at the end is blocked by hired muscle. If nothing has stopped me so far, that's not going to change with this idiot. I really am sinking into a meltdown, though. My mind won't shut off. If any of that guilt with Chris was justified—if it shouldn't have ever happened this way—then this whole affair has been an illusion. A spell. And it's long since died. And I've known that. There's no life left in our relationship. He doesn't eat, doesn't talk to anyone, doesn't write, doesn't participate in waking life in any way whatsoever. When he's not asleep, he's drunk. That's not living. I'm bewitched by fucking skin and bones. I'm in love with remains—with the corpse of a fantasy. The spell has long since been lifted and I still sit by his side, a complete fool in denial with some sort of Stockholm Syndrome. Some psychological phenomenon where I've been so completely and embarrassingly duped, my brain won't come to terms with reality because it'd mean accepting my own stupidity for ever having fallen for him.

Why can't I just get the fuck up and _leave?_

You don't stay with someone that threatens you with physical harm; who doesn't appreciate you until they realize how dark and lonely it's getting in the grave they're digging for themselves and then asks you to jump down and join them. Being with someone is supposed to elevate the both of you, not drag one person down to the other's level.

What kills me is I can't see where this shift in personality came from. It's like some foul fucking voodoo has been lifted – like I've been dreaming this entire time. I didn't see _any_ of this coming.

“Nick. _Please,_ let’s just get out of here.” Her wrist is starting to slip out from my grip. This is becoming a lot like leading a cat to a bath. Even if I'm more than capable of out-powering her, the frenzied squirming that goes along with her abhorrence for this idea the closer we get to the door has me at a severe disadvantage. “ _It's not worth it._ ”

I let go. If she wants to leave, I won't be grieving the loss anytime soon. Either way, this guy's blocking the path to the backstage and employee-only rooms. With crossed arms and a shake of the head that says _'move along'_ , he's immuring me to this war-zone. Getting out of the jungle is VIP only. He's taller than me—muscular but thin—and there's definite threatening elements to his personage that probably made him a shoo-in for this job.

“I need to see Marc.” I'm presenting my shoulder, ready to shuffle past him if he'll get out of the way. 

Not budging a millimeter, he bows his head until we're at eye-level to send me some alpha-male-complex reminder that, although I'm a tall guy, he's taller. It doesn't help that Anita's made it clear she's intimidated for me.

I know I've seen him before, and the arrogant he-man strutting feels familiar too. Most likely, Chris introduced us at some point or at least told me about him, but there's no name tag and whatever interaction we may have had escapes me. He's unforgettably pale as a vampire and has these characteristic heavy circles, pink-tinged to where he might looked stoned if his eyes weren't so focused.

“He's not here.” An American accent; the well-spoken sort—not the obnoxious or unintelligible kind. I've definitely talked to him before. Fuck me if I know when or what about. He's very self-possessed—cocky with the fact that he's probably the only sober person in the building apart from Anita. 

Unless I'm mistaken, the hateful charge he's emanating is directed specially at me, so I'll go out on a limb and assume there's bad blood between us. In return, all my rage is honing in on him, getting ready to launch for whenever the right provocation comes along. We're egging each other on and I don't even know why the hell I don't like him or why he doesn't like me.

The neon bar-lights have an interesting effect of flaring up his blue eyes, blonde hair, and blonde skin in reds and purples. It's a fun play on the idea of turning red with anger. If his singlet and trousers weren't black, he could double as the disco ball.

There's always the possibility he's associated me with Roark from all the times we've hung out here. When it comes to attracting the attention of new acquaintances, vinegar is Roark's specialty. If that's the case—as it usually is—we have a common enemy. Either way, I can clearly see Marc in back, lounging against a wall with a plastic cup, talking to some girl in a red dress, shades, and a haze of cigarette smoke. As much as I could do without brainless guard-dogs, this little interaction has at least pulled me out of my thoughts.

“Is that a fucking mirage behind you?”

“Let's just go, Nick.” For her to weigh out the pros and cons and decide the dope's not worth it, she must be nearing the same levels of grievous social discomfort I've been suffering all night.

“He's busy.” He just smiles some patronizing, closed-mouth leer. This is definitely some sort of revenge. He hasn't moved since I first turned the corner and set eyes on him—not even for his posture's sake to take some strain off of what must be hours of standing around with his head in his ass. Every second of this must be absolutely grand to him.

“What am I busy with?” Marc shouts from behind him. He turns to put down his drink and spots us. Thank God. “Nick? _And_ Anita? Wonderful! Nonsense, Alex—let them through!”

Alex stays glued to the spot for a few seconds more, never breaking eye contact with me. Finally and begrudgingly, he steps to the side.

__ mirror in the bathroom, recompense for all my crimes of self-defense  
cures you whisper make no sense, drift gently into mental illness  
mirror in the bathroom, please talk free - the door is locked, just you and me  
can I take you to a restaurant that's got glass tables?  
you can watch yourself while you are eating  
find no interest in the racks and shelves  
just a thousand reflections of my own sweet self  


_ Chris _

  
“Just so you know, I already canceled my plans for the night. I've got nothing but time...” Mick's situated himself outside the stall, sitting with his back to the adjacent wall and his legs crossed. I can hear him idly tapping a foot on the tile. It's a metronome to the echoes in the toilet bowl of my repeated attempts to spit a never-ending string of vomit and saliva from my lip. These waves that keep torching their way out of me are unrelenting—worsening. The taste is horrid; it's the same old flavors with the addition of coffee. If I couldn't see before, my eyes are totally blurred now—both from crying and from old make-up watering whenever I throw up. He sighs. “Lots... and lots... of time.”

Finally, I just tear some toilet paper from the roll on the wall and wipe my mouth. It's bright red. I haven't eaten anything; I definitely haven't eaten anything red. Maybe more blood from my sinuses. Maybe I bit my lip open again. I can't tell anymore. The tissue drops—it's the cherry on top.

It's painful hugging the toilet like this. My hands are scoured from falling out of the car; the rest of me is in no condition to do anything but lie face down. Six feet under, probably. Everything hurts. There's too much pain to inventory. My throat has been what you might call tender since last night; now it's in shreds. The memory from the bruising is something I can't face—perverting the only person left that I feel safe around with terrifying violence too familiar for comfort. One arm goes over my stomach, trying to hold in both fond memories with the material of the jacket as well as whatever is left in me that could come back up.

I could keep crying from the tearing sensations in my back alone, but I'm sick of bothering everyone with my misery and self-pity. It's frustrating to let this depression linger. I used to be happy. Never content, never perfect, never satisfied, but happy nonetheless. The very fact that I can't just move on—that I inconvenience the friends I have left with the effects of this unyielding pain—has become another reason in itself for perpetuating the negativity. I'm so overstocked on shame as it is, I wouldn't think it possible to hoard anything else, but it keeps building. Even with that self-reflection now, I have to add weakness to my cluster-fuck of reasons for self-loathing.

The tears have stopped. Whatever brief flooding of self-awareness and feeling came over me before has since dried and receded. I'm back in my shell and the only remaining connections with myself that I can glean from reaching my way around in the dark are the bodily pains, the fact that my nerves are shot, that I'm having light-headed palpitations and tremors, and that it's gotten really fucking hot in here. The heat is all-powerful and mighty in the force it has over me; I can't get enough breath to stand up.

“If you really wanna know, Nick and I got into it after you fell. He went to go shoot up instead of helping get you backstage and I... just lost it.”

That sounds pretty typical. How sincere he is in this refusal to give up is flooring me, though. I wasn't exactly expecting a confession, and I can't find any standing, equilibrium, or oxygen to pick apart whatever tactics are behind it. My mind is still in its muddled, slow-moving haze. Introspection and taking stock of all the shitty mornings, days, and nights I've had the past two weeks is the extent of my ability to hold a thought and move fluidly in some sort of progression with it. I'm just barely fast enough to know that I'm slow.

Above all, Roark was right about one thing without a doubt. I am a one-trick pony. It has nothing to do with sex or Nick, though. Music was all that I had. Living in squalor hasn't meant anything to me as long as that drive has been present. I could even argue that I've served some gainful purpose or use to society in what I did. Now, I'm the racehorse with the broken leg, flailing uselessly—panicking over the question: who has the gun?

Apparently, it's not Mick.

“He said a lot of stupid shit, I said a lot of stupid shit, and then he punched me. Essentially.” There's a mute slap when he throws an arm up to gesture at the swelling battle-scar in question and then lets it fall back into his lap. He's thinking out-loud now. This is his embarrassing confession and purging of honesty to the room, addressing me only if I so happen to be listening. I have a difficult time relating to this level of virtue—of him feeling badly about insulting the person who attacked him. Whether it's conscious or not, I don't know, but it's a clever way to suggest that his sincerity would continue as an innate quality with or without me here. “So that's how I got this.”

Admitting checkmate to his nice-guy humility move, I pull my knees to my chest and lay my head back on the stall door. What's really a sad attempt to get enough air to speak comes out sounding like a sigh. It's fitting either way.

“Do you have a cigarette?”

“Yeah.” I can _hear_ the controlled excitement as he fumbles through his jacket. It's as if I've just made the mistake of showing the bag of food to a pet. He's worked into an expectant frenzy now and, even worse, he knows what I'm going to do before I've had a chance to consult my brain. Both of these things are independently annoying for more reasons than I can count on my hands and feet—if I were capable of counting right now—but my patience has already been abraded, dug into, and scratched to where there's nothing but patches of raw irritation in any possible place you could poke or provoke me.

Even so, part of me knows I'm dying for someone to ask those three magic words: _Are you okay?_

My thoughts are incapable of any acceleration and I don't have time to think it through before I've reached up behind me for the lock, nearly clocking myself in the eye with my elbow in the process. I'm holding the door closed, shutting my eyes, trying to breathe normally. My chest is tight, though, and every lungful comes in brief and shallow. This is the exhaustion and decreased functioning of being in a sauna or a masochistically hot shower. In fact, I don't think I've felt this faint and out of breath from heat outside of odd occasions of sex with Nick in the shower—whenever we had running hot water; and that seems so long ago now. But the bothersome part is that this only seems to be affecting me.

Too pathetic for words, I drag myself around to face the door, using the lock as a supporting rope from which to pivot. I unlatch it and let it squeak open on its own accord from there. 

He's already holding the cigarette out to me, raising and bringing it forward in sync while his eyes go to the ground. A gesture that less than subtly reads: _You go ahead and take that—you need it._ This signals the start of the different treatment I've feared and known would come with telling even one person what happened to me. At least he's doing me the courtesy of containing any victorious mention of getting me to come out of the stall.

I crawl so I'm about a foot or so across from him. Walking out of here would be a fantasy, and I'm too tired to fantasize.

I take it from him—carefully avoiding any touch between us—and slip it into my sore, tired, lifeless frown. I can't see well enough to tell what brand it is and he smells too strongly of cologne to for me to pick up any other scent. I imagine, for him, I smell too strongly of alcohol and vomit to pick up any other scent. Regardless—I don't care what it is. Anything will be better than what I'm tasting right now.

As much as I've chastised myself for losing control to the point that I told Gail what I did, I'm not remorseful. The memory is wholly intact—which is refreshing, considering I can't remember half of today. Tonight. Whatever. There are some people who have either been shaped along the way or have self-programmed to suffer in secrecy and complete anonymity. Alone or not, I don't have it in me to bear pain in silence. I'll isolate myself and take on the weight alone, but I can't do it without any self-expression. She happened to be in the flat after I ran out on Nick. After Roark walked in. I happened to be drunk. I expressed myself; she was in the room; end of story.

Dark spots and traces of light are floating in my eyes. The room is rotating around me. What she told Mick in specific, I don't know, but the fact that she did is probably only my fault. I've become so accustomed to bearing what happened, it never occurred to me that I might've already given her too much to shoulder when I pawned that first fraction of it off on her. No matter how drunk I was, I shouldn't have thrown the whole fucking thing at her.

I reach into Nick's pockets—something pricks my finger. The cigarette nearly falls from my lip; I take it from my mouth and into the V of my middle and index fingers instead. Whatever's in here feels like a pen caught sideways. I pull it out and lo and behold: a used syringe. On some level, I guess I'm disgusted, but it's not as if Nick and I have never shared needles. Protecting ourselves from one another lost its point somewhere along the way. At least, up until recently. Now I'm an infected whore and he'll take the time to burn the needle with his lighter before risking sharing it with me. I only wish he'd left the lighter in his pocket instead.

The floor next to me seems as good a dumping ground as any for bio-hazardous materials. I'm sucking on my finger and Mick just stares in disbelief. There's puke, coffee, and copper on my tongue. I need a fucking light.

“He put a _needle_ in his pocket?”

He already knows the answer to his question so I don't know what to say. It's either a needle or my vision has declined beyond repair. Since I can't be bothered to put words to anything, I shrug in some effort of communicating this. While he's off in his mind with indignation, I suck what blood I can from the cut before digging into the inner lining of the coat.

Another mystery object comes into my hand. It feels like leather folded into layers; there's cold metal attached. It's freezing, which makes no sense in the boiling context of this room. I must be running a fever. I take it and discard it on the floor; it's a rolled-up belt.

There's a delay in reaction while I brace myself to feel my blood rush. It's unmistakable. This is Roark's.

This was used to whip me.

This was in my mouth.

This has my blood on it.

This was _on Nick's arm._

“You alright?”

If I look away—if I look at Mick, the floor, anything else—I know I'll start crying again and I won't be able to stop. I cough instead. Why would he keep this? Why would he keep anything that could tie him to what he did to me? Is this supposed to be a trophy to him?

_Why the fuck would he give it to Nick?_

I feel like I'm going to be sick again. It's the psychical equivalent to nails on a chalkboard—to maggot ridden food. I know I shouldn't be shocked. Why would he do any of the things that he's done? Looking for the moral thrust behind the actions of a violent sociopath doesn't have much point to it.

The intensity of my disgust is gripping to the point that it's bolstered over my senses. All consideration for where I am is leaving. The real world is being discarded again for the flooding memories of violation. There's the rotting ceiling. Someone's above me; I don't know which one of them. It's an immovable weight. I can't block out the pain so I resign to it; it's merciless—so pure and full that I've gone the step beyond numbness to hypersensitivity. It doesn't wane. It gets worse. There are no words but _agony_ does come to mind. It's white hot and it doesn't end. And then I'm being choked. The pressure builds in my face to a throb until my vision starts fading. There's nothing I can do to sever myself from the person on top of me.

“Chris?”

I can't distinguish my perceptions from the unconscious imagery. I keep thinking that if I get up or try to move, that humiliating agony will still be there like it was that first morning—to where I couldn't even walk. This is becoming a vacuous pit. If I don't say something, I'm going to sink into it and lose all connection. But remaining motionless is all I can manage to slow the process. What Roark said to me about what he did being for Nick is ringing true. My eyes are anchored to the belt—fading in and out of nightmares.

“Um...” The words won't come. I strain myself thinking on it, but nothing sounds right in my head. I can't talk, but I can stop this from happening. I'm biting my lip. Holding my breath. But my resentment towards Nick has returned at its peak. I'm _always_ there for him. I've always been there for him. If I don't want to feel any grief, it disguises itself as rage to sneak out of me. An inner voice has screamed itself hoarse that, not only should Nick have been there, but none of this would've happened if I'd never met him. It's an old story but it hits like it's brand new each time, like a classic should—or a like a punch to an old bruise. And each time, I'm swept away by the thought and I fucking lose it with him.

I'm chewing on my thumbnail. I've forgotten what I was doing. There's a cigarette in my other hand. Right. I extend it out to Mick, hoping he'll pick up on what I'm trying to ask by context-cues alone. There's a roar of air in my ears; then buzzing takes over. I comb my hair back in some effort to move and return to reality—to do something to displace myself from the film-loop of memory. I swallow hard against the anger and panic building in my throat.

“ _Feuer?_ ” It starts strong but my voice cracks at the end.

He lets some silence pass. I don't know if it's out of confusion or sympathy. Before I can gather myself enough to check, I hear him turning out his pockets.

I taste blood at the back of my throat. His cologne mingles with it in my nostrils.

“What's wrong?”

“It's just... really hot in here.” When I look up, the wall behind him is opening up to dead darkness that layers over his face. There's distant yells. Something is scratching at the back of my mind like an animal locked outside the house. I can't remember what it is but I can't forget that it's there. It wants to come home. My instincts tell me to leave the door shut. They've regressed to the maturity of a child and the inner-mantra has become: _Go away! Leave me alone!_

I'm going numb from head to toe. It's straining trying to focus my eyes, but I manage to bring him back into view. He's holding something and he's been reaching it out to me: a lit match. I want to scream. At him. At Nick. At myself. I put the cigarette in place and lean into the flame instead.

He hasn't said anything. His face is somber, looking prepared to either hear or give bad news.

“Isn't it?”

“I'm kind of... I don't think they have any heat in here, actually.” He clearly doesn't want to contradict me and say it's fucking freezing, but there's no point in sparing my faith in my health or sanity. It's hard not to notice you've lost your mind when it happens via mugging.

The matchbook is still in his hand. On the front, there's three-pronged lines in a circle, shining down from respective points. Seeing that logo is all I need right now.

I'm cringing and grinding my teeth. I wanted this to be impersonal. Detached. Brief but with the expectation of pain, like a medical procedure. It's been ripped out of me, though. Here we go. Again. Shying away from the debasing humility of the situation, I take a remedial drag off the cigarette before shielding my forehead so I don't have to look at him too much. My hands are still tremoring beyond all reason and I'm shining with cold sweat. Yeah—I look real fucking smooth. Of course I can still convince him I'm calm. It's not like I've been vomiting everywhere and crying uncontrollably every five minutes.

With a shudder, the smoke spits out of me. I suck in air, snot, and blood.

“You just... I can't help noticing you just got really upset... really suddenly.”

Very observant. Begrudgingly, my throat clenches and a few tears break free, but it's still sore and dry between my eyelids like I haven't gotten any sleep in a few nights.

“Why do you care?” The dry lump in my throat hasn't gone away, but I've distracted myself rubbing my temple with my thumb—carefully angling the cigarette away from my face—and I manage keep a steady voice. Embers of light particles are swimming in my vision. I feel very heavy all of a sudden and a rush of blood crashes and recedes from my head like a tidal wave. “Nick doesn't. Why are you making me your problem?”

“He does care. He's just... stupid. I mean, he loves you.” There's no room for argument in the condensed, brutal straightforwardness packed in his words. I wonder if he's just universalizing the way he feels in his relationship. I don't think the thought even occurs to him that there'd be any gray areas or circumstantial differences; Nick loves me, end of story. His impression of us is an accepted reality—truth in his eyes—much the same way it doesn't strike someone from my grandmother's generation that everything in the Bible isn't necessarily so in life.

I guess it kind of makes me a dick to call him naïve when he's going out of his way, only trying to help, but it's not like I haven't asked him not to.

I'm not sure what to say. With a shrug, I lower my shield and resume smoking to signal the fact that I'm going to change the subject and get back on track with my question.

“So, all of a sudden. We're friends?”

“Do I really need to come up with a clever reason to want to help you?”

“You have nothing but time, I thought.”

It's faint, but he smiles and rolls his eyes at himself in a sort of _I did say that, didn't I_ way. He scratches his head, then pulls out a cigarette for himself and lights up. Him smoking puts me at ease somewhat, I guess because he's committing to something that'll take up a fair amount of time. I at least know I don't have to worry about him trying to drag me out to the car for another few minutes.

“Okay—you're right. We're not close friends or anything. I haven't really made the effort or been the warmest personality with you to change that, and I seem to piss you off more than half the time when I'm playing the _responsible adult._ But...” He stops. Following whatever everything-nice recipe to measure out his thoughts that he's been adhereing to in order to get me into the car is time consuming. He turns his head, careful not to blow his smoke in my face. It seems strange after all the time Nick and I have spent together being purposefully spiteful to one another. And it's probably even stranger that it's more striking to me when I'm not having shit thrown in my face rather than the other way around. I feel a phantom limb for not being berated. That has to be pretty high up on the fucked-in-the-head scale. At least, it inspires some self-consciousness for my having asked him to explain himself because he wants to make sure I'm alright. “We've lived together for a while now. We do sort of know each other—well enough that I've noticed you're not acting like you. Well enough to know you're in a lot of pain and you're not about to do anything to change it any time soon. I also know I'm over-stepping my bounds, but you need help and no one else is stepping past to give it to you. So, I dunno what else to do. I really don't even know what I'm doing right now. That's not much of an explanation, I guess.”

“To be honest, I don't even know why I'm thinking that you should have an explanation.”

“Well, I dunno. I can see how it'd be... hard – to trust people? After...” He stops and clears his throat, excusing himself for starting the sentence he's decided against finishing. “I'm not gonna press you to talk—obviously, I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to that—but if you need to or want to... You know... My ears are open.”


	9. Eye

_**Pt IX** _

> _“He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his **eye**! yes, it was this!”_
> 
> Edgar Allan Poe 

> 
>   
> 

  
_I know I'm irresponsible and I don't behave_  
_and I ruin everything that I do_  
_and I'll probably get arrested when I'm in my grave_  
_I paid fifteen dollars for a prostitute_  
_with too much makeup and a broken shoe_  
_but her eyes were just a counterfeit_  
_she tried to gyp me out of it_  
_don't listen to the rumors that you hear about me_  
_'cause I ain't half as bad as they make me out to be_  
_well, I may lose my mind but, baby, can't you see_  
_that I'll be savin' all my love for you_

_Roark_

_My face burns. Though better judgment says it's too soon, I'm impelled forward by an upward-spiraling turmoil. It's a whirlwind of animosity._ _Something old and violent that hangs in the air—like blood over a historic battlefield._ _The hotter my hostility boils, the more slick and fiery it flows through me, until my pulse is everywhere; in my temples, my throat, my groin._

_There's something unsatisfactory about the display in front of me. It was artistic in my head—him chained to the bed by torn pieces of his clothes; naked, pants around his ankles. By picking apart his ridiculous outfit, I've taken a symbol for all his empty claims to greater distinction of mind, uniqueness, importance—and I've turned it against him. His belts lock the trap of clothing at his feet to the bed railing. A few more go around his tangled shirt, securing his wrists above his head. But it doesn't satiate me. It doesn't set right any injustices._

_I'm kneeling above him at the foot of the bed, doing a mental inventory of his body—the traits Nick knows in contrast to the ones I know. There's the hollows of his cheeks. His narrow chest. His navel. His knees are together, crooked and pale against the blankets. Then there's the subtle curve of his hips, rising to form even subtler slopes from his waist. It's debatable that he's too thin. In a Darwinian sense, it's unappealing, but there's something aesthetically pleasant about it on him. His skin sets nice over drug-trimmed muscle and bone, looking even and clear with the exception of an old bruise on the inside of his thigh. His sex, his legs—he's clean-shaven for Nick and ready for the occasion. They were planning on spending tonight together after he finished with his shift; there was a blank sticky-note on Nick's door when I left. This always falls on nights where everyone has plans to be out late and Chris coincidentally takes a vacation from the couch to Nick's room. I don't pretend to understand why, but it's their go-ahead signal._

_In front of me are the intimate traits that are permanently enmeshed in the abstract conceptions Nick has of Chris in his thoughts. I try to use them to imagine the way he thinks of him. There are dozens upon dozens of things to this effect—all too small to make a difference one way or another on their own, but holding enormous impact in their number. And yet, they're so familiar to Nick, I doubt such a seemingly minor difference in the way his play-thing is conceptualized by others would even enter into his thoughts. I doubt it's ever crossed his mind that the way he views him is drastically skewed by unconscious sentimentality._

_Knife in hand, I'm tracing my fingers over every item on the list. I plan to absorb all the intimate little details with a clear head—to know Chris the way Nick knows him without the prerequisite of being blinded by hormones. And it won't make a difference. There is_ nothing _about him that I simply don't know that could make him fill the Godlike status Nick bestows onto him. The sounds he makes in bed, the way he tastes, the freckle on his pelvis—knowing these things doesn't turn him into the person Nick sees. It's Nick's mind that turns him into the person Nick sees._

_I pull my shirt over my head and toss it._

_His nudity is meant to be humiliating to him; not to me. And yet, the unanticipated eroticism sending my blood south is dragging me down along with it. It's pulled me face-to-face with him, crouched on my hands and knees. I'm running the tip of the blade down his chest, autopsy style, just light enough to leave nothing but an uncut, reddened streak of skin behind. All the underlying sexuality aside, there's a rage-filled fascination with his unconscious reaction to my touch. It's giving him some sort of sleeping security or content, as if he thinks he's lying in bed with Nick right now._

_If I'm going to be with him like Nick, it'd be better suited to that end for him to stay asleep—for him to stay in ignorance and blindly react the same way he does with Nick._

_It's amazing what the human mind is capable of. Turning play-things into play-mates. Predators into lovers. Fools into seducers._

_Even at the mercy of some sexual tsunami of adrenaline, my loathing soars high and faithful. I can hear all the pornographic elation that comes through the walls when they're together. I can envision him under me as it happens through Nick's eyes. I've heard enough and walked in on enough to confirm that this position of bondage is a well familiar one to them. Chris's perversions, I've guessed—as if being bent over and fucked up the ass every night until Nick has him screaming into his pillow isn't enough to get him off. He needs to be bound and gagged along with it. And probably told that he's a whore, a faggot, a slut; on some level, at least, they've both admitted how profound of a partner he really is._

_I realize I'm grimacing—scowling down at him. My breath is escaping me. My face feels tense and my eyes are heavy. I grab him by the jaw and tug so he faces me. In response, his neck is slack and eased. How wholly trusting he is with this unconscious acceptance of my identity is absurd. His body's really been fine-tuned to Nick's. Everything about the physical, intimate touch of another man for him has been shaped by the nights he's spent with Nick. It leaves him pliant. For lack of a better word: easy._

_Before I can think on it, I'm taking a shot at him with my bared knuckles and the knife-handle. His head is whiplashed to the side with a groan and he stirs and recoils in pained response. Though I've broken open the skin on his cheek, I've also hurt my own hand in the process._

_There's a whimper like being struck was part of his dream. I can't tell if he's coming to or going deeper into the throes of a nightmare. Either way, before there's time to find out, I let the knife fall on the mattress. I proceed to draw the belt out from my waist, taking it with both hands to lay over his mouth. It takes the force of my thumb and a finger between his lips and pushing on his gums for his teeth to unclench, but after that he lets me shove the belt into his mouth. It goes crudely over and into him when I yank the looping at the back of his head. Stabbing a new belthole for it to fasten, I buckle it tight, snagging his hair in back._

_I stop._

_There shouldn't really be a call for gagging him. It's a smart precaution, but he's blasted out of his mind. He won't know the difference between me and Nick. Whatever recollections he has, if any, he'll piece together that he drank too much and passed out while Nick was still in the heat of the moment with him._

_But something pulls at me—tugging me along to continue with the_ precautions _. My gut tells me, as long as I can get him to shut up, he should be awake for this. He should be there to feel it. Any struggle would just be thwarted by the gag and restraints. I can still experience him just the same. Furthermore, I can assert the truth of what he is to him in silence. The whole thing is a pointless abuse of opportunity otherwise. He needs to be aware that this is violation. He_ needs _to feel it. This needs to be injury, not intimacy. I'm not here to fucking delight him. If his body and, on whatever level, his mind, still assume with every touch that I'm Nick, then that's all this will be to him: a night he missed out on._

_This is it. My adrenaline peaks. Then it rushes—plummets like a rollercoaster, and I can barely move my hands. Mindlessly, my fingers go to unzip my pants. But I stop._

_I haven't thought this far. The pain it'll cause him doing this dry is decidedly a fundamental point to the act, but how do I avoid hurting myself?_

_The panic surges. My eyes flit to the nightstand. There's a lamp. Phone. TV remote. Ashtray. Lighter. Wallet. Absolutely nothing useful._

_There's the torn heap of clothing on the ground—with nothing in it. He already made his empty pockets clear back at the bar. I check my pockets; pills, condom, loose change._

_I roll off of him. There has to be_ something _. I cross around the bed and pad over to the bathroom door—flip on the light. I'm flinging folded towels and washcloths aside, practically tearing the drawers from the counter. Something shifts around inside the bottom drawer; I yank it open. Apart from a travel-sized soap bar, it's empty. What were high hopes have nose-dived into a crash site that's growing uglier by the second. I throw the soap at the wall as if I'm going for a curve ball across a thirty-yard field. The door slams behind me and I head back to the bed, expecting the perfect object to have miraculously appeared somewhere nearby._

_How could I not think this far ahead?_

I need something.

Fuck. _I can't even breathe. My heart is rattling off like an alarm:_ abandon ship. _I let my knees buckle under me and I drop to the floor. Blood crowds my face, slithering over my already dimmed vision in the dark of this room. I'm rubbing my temples with the thumb and middle finger of one hand—dragging them together over my eyes to block the red flare from the lamp. Cringing, I grab hold of the bedframe with my other hand, inches from where I've strapped one of his bare feet. My head pulsates with an incalculable weight of terror._

_How much did I have to drink?_

_I can recall the clanging glass of empty beer bottles, fluorescent soft light, and isles of bar-stools and booths, but I was counting his drinks, not mine. Listening to him fucking talk about my and Nick's music, like he can even understand the words he's using, let alone understand him. Like he could even fucking_ begin _to appreciate him. To appreciate the way that Nick has about him—how it always seems he free-floats from life's restraints, detached from mediocrity, vacancy, and drifting with radio-waves like he's poetically in-tune to another plane. You just fucking know it when you hear his voice, read his words—the tell-tale signs of those broken shackles. When it was just us, my bare wrists and ankles spoke the volumes of uninvented words back to him; the words you'd never find if you took the whole of your life._

_Now he's collided into this shit. Like a child's kite caught on fucking tree branches._

_These preoccupations of his have all come and gone, and I've remained an observer. I've bared witness to the fleeting fairy-tales of his former lovers. There's very little to be said about some, and yet still I've always had quite a bit to say about all of them. They've always been expenditures which served their necessary functions. Whether intrigue etched down to disinterest, that initial flicker of fascination tardily dwindled towards tolerance, and Nick tolerates only what he must. In the trail of women he's left by the side of the road: righteousness, ridicule, relationships—these could all be done away with, done without._

_I tell myself this is no different, but his hang-up on Chris feels like something else. It's an easy feeling to dismiss as confused senses that need recalibrating, given that it_ has _been something else for the simple fact that he's never had any same-sex relations before. But my instincts know it best. This is the one he's gotten himself hung up on. The one time he can't simply kick the traits begging tolerance to the curb._

_But_ why?

_As a fuck-you to the universe, I grab one of his boots and fling it at the dresser across from me. It echoes his broken words back at me: '_ My seeing Nick is nothing to do with it. _I admire your—'_  


_Admire_ what? _What the fuck do you understand enough to_ admire?

_I crawl to a lone chair opposite the bed. With the blind ease of instinct, I'm upright and holding a hand under my ribs before I know it._

_Checking my pulse seems like the go-to decision taught to me precisely for situations like this, but my mind's a skipping record trying to put words or images to my total confusion as to what Nick sees in him. I can't focus to count heartbeats, and I'm afraid they'll either double or stop if I change position._

_There's a tightening in my throat. Something in my stomach burns—not with physical pain, but an unbearable sentiment. Resentment. Grief. Maybe something worse._

_Breathe in._

_Breathe out._

_Whatever.  
_

_He's still asleep. He'll be out for a while._  
  
_I'm ransacking my memories, turning my head inside out for anything I might've thought up during the evening about the execution of this act. I see the damp, glittering street on the way here, a busted crosswalk light, and the lit windows from the foggy parking lot._

I was counting down the time it took to get here, not the steps.

_Breathe in._

Out.

_Counting bottles. Glittering street. I feel the gears of my mind starting back up, turning efficiently._

_Bottles._

In.

Out.  


_I'm flitting barefoot across the carpet yet again, this time to the window. Matching every step I take, my head pounds with some internal, bouncing weight—an ache of panic and frustration, for lack of better words. I yank the curtains open. The metal rings scrape across the support rod and come together with a horrible rattle that echoes in my skull like I'm shaving teeth._

_The fog has thinned enough that I can see my dim-witted friend pouting in the driver's seat of Gail's car._ _Whoever's in the next room over from this one is either a sufferer of insomnia or they fell asleep with the television on. Either way, the glow still spotlights the wall of graffiti with the_ _Nietzschean whale, barely a stone's throw away. Underneath is a dumpster._

_My panic has vanished to little more than a foolish memory. I zip up my fly. Scavenge the ground for my shoes—coming up with only one. I toss it, snatch up my jacket and the room key from the nightstand, and walk to the door._

_Once more._

_In._

_Out._

_The doorknob is cold. It rattles and shrieks when I turn it. As soon as my bare feet hit the cement outside, I double back onto the carpeted floor of the room. It feels like I've ripped a layer from the bottoms of my feet, like skin from a tongue stuck to a stop-sign pole in winter. Sighing, frustrated beyond a reasonable level for the high I'm riding, I pull my arms through my jacket-sleeves and stretch my neck over the threshold to survey the distance between me and the dumpster._

_I pick up on some movement in the corner of my vision and my head swings in direction like a bloodhound. There's nothing but _the dumb brute having a conniption fit in the car. Still, a_ nxiety starts fizzling up my chest again. My nerves are telling me I saw someone just turn the corner and duck out of sight—someone with a mess of black hair—but I feel no certainty whatsoever about this blind belief._

_The idiot is opening the car door, but I frantically wave him to shut it and sit the fuck down. He just about loses his mind—violently throws his hands up as a scream of:_ _What the fuck are you doing?_ _Frustration is widening my eyes to the point of pushing my brows into a facial-muscle cramp. I lower both hands on level like I'm patting some invisible surface—what I'd imagine is a signal for_ _low profile_ _—and I mime the librarian's command of silence. He carries on griping and groaning silent-film style, but the door slams shut and that's all I care to see._

_Giving in to the temptation to survey the parking lot once more is a paranoid luxury I can't allow myself. It's late and getting later. I've closed the door._ _I can't really believe that I'm walking. I'm removed from myself. Just staring out a lens while my bones and tissues take shallow breaths and lead me along the short distance, like the moving walkways at airports._

_I_ _feel_ _vacant, but t_ _he felony I've left in the room eats at what nerve I've mustered in order to go through with this. The atrophy is on some secondary level, relating to my courage to act rather than my desire to. My conscience has been worn to the bone. Still, even now, its familiar, tired voice shrieks over the din of the others, begging the consideration that it's not too late to back out._

_But it is._

_Circumstantially, situationally, it's not. I could easily lock the door, stroll up to the front desk, and tell whoever to get the police down here to take the drunk pervert who's locked himself in my car into custody—_ _he drugged my friend and forced us here under the threat of violence_ _. The feeble-minded fool would get what he deserves. Chris would wake up on his back, thoroughly confused, but it wouldn't be anything new for him. And I'd just go home._

_Hypothetically, I could do all of that. He was maybe one drink away from the dark depths of black-out intoxication when he fell asleep. Given that, coupled with all the crushed benzos I spiked his drinks with, he's not waking up by body-clock or sleep-cycle patterns any time soon. Even if he were to, I'd just stick to the story._

_I'm slumped over the dumpster's industrial-strength plastic rim, bowing down into a faceful of old garbage smell—something that plays sensory partner to filth and mundane chores. I've given up on listening for that hollow, tinkling clang of glass on glass inside any bags. There's just a frenzy of the rubbery, putty drag of my fingers through black plastic bags. I pull inch after inch until it tears holes. The spoils inside are culminating in disappointment: shredded papers and cafeteria rubbish, paper gowns and one-use soaps and shampoo bottles._

_Maybe I should feel shame. I don't know what I'm feeling. I don't know if I'm feeling. I know that I'm trembling. I know that I'm sifting through garbage and possible medical waste. My mind wanders. That weak voice gets on its last leg: what about this could possibly feel right? I've got Nick's boyfriend drugged and bound and gagged to a motel bed, there's a pervert and possible sex-offender waiting in the car to rape a guy he exchanges daily pleasantries with when he serves him drinks, and I'm looking through a dumpster for an empty bottle to get things started bloody and wet so I don't get skin burns on my dick. An idea—not to mention—that is only in the scope of my imagination because I've heard it before in horrendous accounts of sex crimes._

_Something glass-smooth and cylindrical passes under my hand. The train of thought runs off track, decimating any lingering doubts. My blood-pressure takes a dive in the shock of dumb fucking luck; my face is going warm and fuzzy, sending pins-and-needles signals out to the rest of me. I'm overcome with dizziness and goosebumps and I have to stop to stand still for a moment, trash in hand. I stare dead in front of me—_ Gott ist tot— _not daring to glance at what's in my hand and shatter my hopes._

_When I look down, I've found my equilibrium, my nerve, and my beer bottle._

_It's glass—tall and thin-necked with a peeling label. The logo is torn and watered to an illegible blot of colors, ruffled with the white paper-backing underneath. I scrape it from the bottle, up under my fingernails and then tossed into the dumpster. I'm checking over my shoulders back and forth, making the clear coast come alive to my mind. When my neck swings around once more, my feet follow and the rest of me pivots in sync to face the line of motel doors._ _I sprint hunched over, pulling my jacket like a curtain to shield something precious. Then I take off for the door in an athletic burst that's far outside the natural bounds of my level of physical fitness._

_My feet are dead slabs of frozen meat. I can feel them thawing—can feel the freezer-burned sensation returning, which makes the rush for the door that much harder. Everything is coming alive. The key nearly drops from my hand when I make a first stab at the doorknob. Then I'm turning it, hearing the lock click, and I pull the key out and step back. The door creaks and yawns open with a blast of hot air._

_The mindless travel forward continues. I flip the lightswitch out of habit, and my sight has to adjust to the light all over again. Whatever falls in my vision gets painted with this sandy, radial blur that pains someplace set deep behind my eyes. What was inviting moments ago is alien and blinding to see now. Full of greys and yellows and film grain, everything looks like an aged photograph. I could be staring into an heirloom photoalbum. Before it gets to be too overwhelming, I shut off the light. The solitary, soft glow of the lamp is far more palpable._

_It's warm in the room. Suffocatingly warm. As the feeling flows back into my hands and feet, I remember the bottle still under my jacket, pressed to my chest. I throw my shoulders, building enough momentum for the jacket to slip off by itself. It falls from my back to my elbows. With some blind maneuvering and shakes of my arm, I'm free of the first sleeve. The bottle changes hands, and I throw the whole jacket from my wrist onto the edge of the bed—just by Chris's feet._

_And then there it is again, as terrible as before._ _The appetizing spread of his naked body over the blankets. Something that brings me both desire and dread. It's an unbearable appeal to the voracious pit in my stomach—a carnal twist of sexual desire and hate. The sight has whisked me back onto the bed. He is seductive; not simply possessing the quality, but embodying it. His splayed legs cast a come-hither spell I can now appreciate the irresistibility of that Nick wrestles with. The temptation in having those legs wrap around you—_ _to violate his handsome body with the act of penetration in itself—and then ravishing it, consuming it._ _Forcing_ _breathless screams of pleasure out of him with every consuming, heated lunge forward. The passion is compelled_ _further by the very gratification this masculine-androgynous figure takes from having his body ravaged. Pillaged._ _Used_ _. He makes for a heavenly sex-toy with all the guilty thrills and delights that only come from sin. What shock is it Nick's formed an addiction to using him? He's the moaning Siren. Nick is Odysseus cut loose from the ship's mast. One of those lab rats neglecting the food button for the pleasure one until it starves to death._

_I've broken out in goosebumps all over. The blood flows and the heat builds back into every vein and vessel. My nerves keep oscillating in anticipatory pleasure. It's too much seeing him like this, let alone crawling along on top of him. I'm so nervous I've started shaking, and I can barely keep the stamina to reach the bottle between his legs. Riding out the rush to its peak, I crawl forward in warm complacency, none of my urgency lessened for it. The room feels like coffin-space. My head spins. My heart skips a beat. My hands falter. I've pulled his knees apart, opened up his thighs, but both hands are stuck second-guessing, holding on to the bottle in ready position._

_It hits me finally. I have no familiar ground to relate to this on. No way of knowing what to expect. This is really going to happen, and I'm completely consumed with panic, that I need to tell myself to stop, that I need to get the fuck out of here. But I remember my purpose—my motive: exposing their relationship. I have to feel what it's like for Nick._

_In unanimous agreement with all my selves—the animal, the reason, the conscience—decidedly, I should go about this with stealth. But my eyes fall on his face again and that's it. In the soft light, with nothing but the elegantly protruding claws of his ribcage concealing a heart in dream-world turmoil, he's brought this interval to its peak. I can't look at him without hearing it:_ _'It_ _wasn't a choice. It just... happened.'_ _I've let the bottle go—settled myself on top of him, pulled my hand back. I'm clenching tense, digging my nails into my palms. He falls and rises with every silent breath. I see his eyelids flicker, deep into REM sleep. I bite my lip. Grind my teeth._ _'_ _You don't know him the way I do. You don't understand.'_

_There's a flat, hard sting in my knuckles and I only realize what I'm doing when I hear him yell, sounding near to consciousness. They're red, matching up to their crash-site on the bottom, outermost edge of his eye-socket, and I don't know which of us is bleeding. His eyes push open, working overtime against the force of pain screwing his face into a cringe. I pull my arm back from the elbow, intending to stop, but we look at each other and it catapults me forward. Taking hold of him by the throat for the shot, I punch him again. And again. And again. Like I'm assaulting the dirt stuck under my nails that'll never wash out._

_'_ _You don't know him the way I do.'_

_“ _Fuck you!_ _Fuck you!_ _”__

_The metal of the belts jangles against the headboard as he starts in with wild attempts to thrash and flail to his escape. But he can't move away from me. He can't even scream. Muffled, animal cries come bursting from his throat, flattening to dull noise on the leather strap in his mouth. He shoves upward and twists his stomach back and forth, but that's all he's capable of._

_The wet, packing sound of each punch drowns out his choking, breathless protests, until it's all I hear. The blood sprays. I've split his lip and it dribbles down his chin. The skin on his brow bone has torn open, spilling it all over his temple, up into his hair, and splattering stray drops at his forehead with every impact. Most of all, it's gushing down, seeping red into the white of his eye._ _I feel it hot and wet on my fist but I can't stop hitting him. In this fit of rage and surrealism, it's like I'm watching someone else._ _Any repulsion I felt has become abstracted; the_ _burning sense of wrong in the pit of my stomach has melted. I am not repelled by reaching to see the pain he's in._ _I feel no moral outrage._ _It's nothing but a clash of inherited principles. Concepts and arguments. Words. Inventions of society. None of the objections are real._

_This anger is real. The hate I feel is real. Nick is_ _real._

_However much some part of me wants to see any fault in my thoughts, feelings, or actions in this out-of-bounds anger, it's out-played by those very things. The drive for reflection isn't strong enough. Not when I still see them together in my mind's eye. And it's not even the fucking that I see anymore. It's their wild engagement with one another. The intimate stare-downs. Nick's smile. Everything counts as another scrape from the gnawing, clawing animal in my gut. Gestures of their friendship feel worse than anything I've let myself imagine so far—worse than all of it multiplied together._

_In the time it takes for my arm to rear back for another shot, he manages an unintelligible yell. I just hit that much harder. He repeats it, though. Louder. And louder. There's blood, pains, and cries, but it's not good enough._ _He's only wounded; I want him broken. I want the pieces obliterated, with no possibility of being scraped back together by stitches and soldering._

_The truth of it screams and shrieks at me: this needs to be worse than anything I could imagine, because he deserves it. I know the pains of being hit in the face. I know choking shock and fear. It's not enough._

_I shake off the ache in my hand, sending stray drops of blood at the lampshade. His face is a mess. Still shouting at the belt in his mouth, he's taken to twisting his arms in whatever attempt to free his joined wrists. His legs keep writhing against their restraints under me. I hold more than his life in my hands, but there's only panic communicated by his eyes. It's nothing like the pain I've waited to see._

_Dissatisfied, my newly-red hand has found its way back to the bottle. I guide it to him, bringing it into position with my palm forcing on its rim._ _He wails; it won't go in. I press again, with more aggression—still to no avail. I grab his thigh for leverage and shove forward, applying all the pressure I'm capable of. Rather than more of the same gradual fight, the head of the bottle penetrates him with one violent drive from my fist. His knees kick up, his head is thrown back, and he_ screams _. The sound makes my hair stand on end; the sheer volume induces a full-body flinch. And I see it in his eyes: a flicker of the_ _horror I've imagined replaces this persistent, groggy confusion about what's being done to him—at least for a moment. It's small-scale, but there nonetheless. And now I know how to draw it out._

_I pull the bottle out and shove it forward again until skin and muscle give way and it's back that short ways inside him. Thrashing violently yet still strapped in place, moving like he's tied to a hospital gurney in the midst of a seizure, he howls in pain. A threatened animal making to fight me. The belts aren't coming undone any time soon. Furthermore, gravity works to my advantage._

_His skin is tearing. Blood flows as a natural lubricant. I continue the motion until the friction fades. It's a green light that the bottle has served its purpose, so I drag it out to toss it over the side of the bed. Taking myself into my hand happens almost without thought. I'm already hard, and the fact_ _he's_ _brought me to this state of arousal fuels a frustration beyond mitigation. Because this is what he makes Nick feel._

_“ _What gives you the right to do this with him?”__

_I force into him, still managing to hurt myself in spite of the supposed slickness of injury. It's an awful, tight restraint around me, in the sense of constricted movement and circulation. When I try to push myself deeper, there's a guttural hysteria of sounds. His body is fighting on all thinkable levels not to accept this assault—not to accept me into him. The furious leather-on-leather grind cuts into the charged, warm air of the room as he kicks and flexes all limbs, twisting and thrashing with enough violence to instant-rope-burn his wrists and ankles._

_“_ _Answer me._ _”_

_I take up the knife from where I laid it beside him. My satisfaction for the plain bodily harm in fighting has already been met; I'm not about to wrestle with him throughout this. The blade circles under his eye—the thin edge drawing blood along the already crimson, deep-set crevice. It's fresh and fine like a paper cut. He doesn't dare move a fraction of a hair. Instead, he fights to speak for his life against the leather strap. His eyes flit from the knife, to me, to all around the room—surveying our surroundings for the first time, maybe to gauge his odds of escape or rescue. I don't know if he's not yet come to grips with what's happening to him, and that possibility makes me furious._

“ _Pay attention! I said_ answer me! _” I don't care that I'm shouting. I don't_ _care if anyone hears—if they break the door down and catch me. My cautious shadow protests, but it's all unreal, hypothetical nonsense. Just more words. Very real beneath me, h_ _e tries to yell back again—the same nonsense, but louder—repeating himself, wholly consumed by terror. Feigning confusion. But there's no reason he shouldn't understand. He knows what he is. He knows what he's done. And he's fucking lying to me. He knows why I'm doing this and what he's brought onto himself. It's infuriating for him to put on this act. To spit in my face even further._

“Answer me, Chris! _” Everything bursts out from me, tearing through to a heavy buck forward for added direction to my question. What gives you the right to do_ this _with Nick? It should clear up all potential confusion. “Answer me, Chris.”_

_I force another thrust with every utterance of that private, intimate nickname—so savage, his whole body flinches. He's getting shoved a fraction of an inch further up along the sheets each time, bunching them in folds along with his weight. With the base delight and gratification I'm taking in this, I can barely feel the dull, heavy blows from the bulk of his rebelling body._

“ _I can't hear myself think if you're going to keep_ whining like that. _” This comes out much louder than I anticipated. Whatever provokes me to verbalize the abuse to such a point that the consequences are unreal fails somehow to also mute the sense that I'm taking a treacherous journey up a staircase or past a squeaky door in the dead of night. I place my hand on his throat, balancing my weight and the center of my movement down onto his airway. Pushing forward, shoving him—forcing his skull against the headboard with a knock at the critical point of every motion, like waves crashing onto canyon walls. Feels good. He's good. Or,_ it's good _, because I know I_ have _him_. _I'm concentrating on the flow of skin all around and all beneath me. Concentrating on the channeling—the emulation of Nick in this act. This favorite_ pastime _of his. “Not quite what I was expecting for a five-hundred dollar whore.”_

_A scream breaks from his chest, chipping off into sobs, then getting twisted and hacked to something barely recognizable in-between._

“ _It's all you ever were to him. Once he can't fuck you anymore, you'll mean nothing. You're fucking nothing.”_

_I shut my eyes and focus on the movements. Grinding into him. My defenses melt. Ecstasy bubbles and burns up in place. A shoulder or an elbow connects with me every once in a while. The pressure builds and I'm waiting for my release in his agony. But nothing happens. I just hear him lament for his life and more._

 _You want me to stop?” My feigned empathy with the soft, cooing sounds of downtalk is a joke by itself. The words—the question—just adds a spice of humiliation to the mix._

_Some traumatic shock has taken him—nerves battered and wrecked to raw, flayed shreds. They're splitting and ripping through the duration to scraped roadkill over a stretch of highway as I move against him. He's got his eyes shut tight. Too destroyed to remain conscious, but unable to find any calm in the storm to lose himself to anything as blissful as fainting._

_Pleasure builds and spreads in warm waves, rippling me. The idea of speaking to him, silenced as he is, takes on a new, powerful appeal._

“ _Maybe if you beg.” I lean to whisper at his ear._ Wait for it _—then I pull back for the reaction. Our eyes meet, but there's no response. No contact. It's an empty stare-down. He could give a shit about understanding where I'm coming from, and vice-versa. In a bitter impersonation of Nick, I provide a few tender nips at his neck—getting a metallic taste of spilled blood in the process. My breath is growing short and starting to space out my words. “Just tell me to stop and I'll stop, Chris.”_

_Somehow finding the will to gather the withered pieces of his nerves in crude heaps, his face contorts. It's some deep snarl of hatred, raging against what's being done to him, with all the dignity and dexterity of a decrepit paralytic bawling and growling in frustration at the hands of Nurse Rached. I can still see a viable struggle in the dull sheen where the light has left his eyes. Something that's escaped from the cage of his person. Something animal._

“Beg me and I'll stop. _”_

_I've cracked the fragile, glass-paneling of humanity separating the soul from the abyss I've already thrown myself at. That force shatters inward—presses inward. And I'm gone. And so is he. We're mixing blood in this act, and all my hate—all the monstrosity—has been embedded in him from the moment of that initial break of boundary. What I see in his eyes is a glint of hell I've forced on him, that might have possessed him well on his way to taking my life by now if he'd been capable._

_'Tangible' doesn't cut it. We're clawing and stomping around on the same brainwaves. The pain doesn't matter to him. Hopes for rescue don't matter. The more that I define those realities for a rise of emotions, the more available they are also for his faculty of reason. Crying out for the sake of either purging release or calls for help have died as options to him. He's numbing out and he doesn't want to cry any more._

_I've dragged us both out into the feral—the monstrous. There are no morals and no rules here, and I've been kidding myself if I thought I could scheme and plot my way through the territory. I have to push beyond what limits I may have fantasized I'd stay within. This survival instinct and tyranny of adrenaline holding me hostage goes double for him. His life is under threat and, furthermore, he wants to get even._

_I release his throat, hauling both his hips into my hands. No squeamishness strikes me at the sound of over-straining his joints with a forced pull, far beyond what his legs would otherwise reach from the belts lashing him to the bed post. They crack and pop, and he breathes audible pain at the belt. Placing additional stress on his body, bringing his hips closer together, I drive forward in the perfect opportunity. The unwillingness of his body to receive me is aggravated in this position. Doubled. I rip through that suspended tension with further force—splitting more skin, spilling more blood._

_Screaming more hoarse and awful pain at the leather, his head jerks back in such violent recoil, he practically bulldozes through the headboard, impacting a rounded dent as wide as the crown of his skull. I've drawn blood enough to send him up another plateau in pain, and I'm not about to let him capsize into surrender._

_With the power I hold over him through intensifying his pain, I can subdue him without effort. There's yet another violent fit from his arms. He's slamming his wrists and elbows together, most likely creating novel pains like decoys for his nervous system—giving his brain anything else to hone in on to curb the focus from me._

_He throws his head at the bedpost again._

_Again._

_And again._

_It's cracking, displacing chips of wood from the same dent. He screams and chokes for air the whole way through. I can't tell whether this is the uncontrollable frenzy of a psychotic break from over-straining his pain threshold and very human nature, or if it's another attempt at distracting his nerves from me with threat of injury to a far more vital area. The brain is a fundamentally selfish, over-defensive organ._

_I let go of his thighs and make a carefully timed reach for his head, avoiding getting my fingers pinned and fractured between another blow from his skull to the wood. My hands find two fistfuls of his hair in the midst of one last crash, too late. He throws himself with enough force and willpower that he's knocked outcold._

_Unresponsive._

Limp _._

_The room is quiet. I only hear my panting._

_With him all of a sudden a rag-doll, the fear that pressed the rigid fit that knocked him out has been displaced—like taking the container away from water. It's seeping into me. I'm still inside him but the pressure that's building isn't sexual. The back of his head is damp. I can't tell if it's blood or sweat. There's nothing that I can do with myself. The tension is still inflating. I'll pop soon. Before it can happen, I let his hair go and take his bound hands into mine, making sure the belts are still secure. The ring he wears from Nick is cold on my skin._

_There's no more warning after that. I rip my way out of him with a gruff cry. I'm up on my feet, naked and reaching for my head in hysteria. The lamp comes into my grasp instead, though. I pull it from the nightstand. The plug tears from the wall; the whole thing soars to the bed. A hot light-bulb bursts when it hits his stomach, sounding strangely dampened. The shade bends and tears when the lamp rolls off of him and over the edge of the mattress._

_My throat burns stiff and swollen, and the edges of my palms dig into my eyes. I choke on my scream, sinking to the floor._

  
_looked at my hands and there's a red stream_  
_that went streaming through the sands like fingers_  
_like arteries, like fingers (how much fits between the eyes of a horse?)_  
_he lay, pressing it against his throat (your eyes) he opened his throat_  
_nobody heard; he was on that bed, it was like a sea of jelly_  
_and so he seized the first (his vocal chords shot up) possibility_  
_(like mad pituitary glands) it was a black tube, he felt himself disintegrate_  
_(there is nothing happening at all) and go inside the black tube_  


_Chris_

The baffled, disheartened double-take serving as the supporting structure to Mick's silence is touching, but I'm suspended in hot delirium. My face is burning, yet the veins in my arms feel like I've just shot up with ice water. Sweat bleeds down my back. The tickling traces of heat wrap around me, holding boa-constrictor restraints on my lungs. Each slip of perspiration seems to find its way into a different cut. It's stuck this shirt to my skin—seeping salt water into blood, stinging like toxic snake bites all underneath Nick's jacket. My skin presses the bruises of its own nasty volition. I can't breathe without feeling it.

“I just need to be alone right now.” Guilt spills fast over and into these words, sinking my voice to a murmur at the end. Considering my ingratitude or indifference toward the effort he's making, something seems wrong to the point that my conscience is engaging me. But the gaps in that better judgment are just big enough to prevent the jumps that'll change my mind.

“Yeah. I understand. And I really wish I could do that for you.” The sympathy in his voice has regressed to pity. He's already demonstrated that he _doesn't_ understand. I'm waiting for him to finish the thought, but then I guess that's it. He wishes he could leave me alone, meaning he can't. Or won't. It doesn't make a difference. Whatever his reasons are, I haven't got it in me to insist otherwise. The poison of unrelenting pain has already taken effect. My vision has gone from blurring shapes to blurring realities. I can't look long-view at the implications of what he's saying beyond a very simple understanding: I'm not getting out of here alone.

It's a bad time to talk; a bad time to be talked to. The grip of emotions keeps tugging me along, dragging me down a never-ending spiral staircase. Down we go, and Mick is calling, calling, calling after, knowing that his voice should carry, but oblivious to my predicament. Oblivious to the existence of any pull of emotion that can accelerate past the speed of sound.

“I appreciate it, but...” I don't mean this at all and it doesn't come out sounding like I do. With epileptic hands, I keep my eyes shielded and rub out the cigarette short on the floor. My hair's flat now, soaked through with rain and sweat. My wrists and ankles are on fire. I don't know if it's the fever or the room, but there's searing rope-burn when I try to steady myself. I'm just nudging Roark's belt with my foot, unable to look away. The sense of an impending threat has inflated my chest. The belt writhes on the floor and I feel small and pathetic, like I don't deserve a backbone to have had bashed up, because I know I'm not going to fight him on this.

He talks and this vehicle just guns past him—runs him off the road and keeps running until I'm in the salvage yard. Until moving any part of myself becomes an act of turning the crank to a trash compactor with all my bones inside.

Part of me knows these are the symptoms I've coddled and cradled Nick through time after time. I'm ambivalent to the last picture of having had heroin: when he shot me up this morning. Earlier than that, I don't remember. There's been nothing else for the pain while I've been healing; it's just become part of my diet. But the thought that I could sink into the worst parts of withdrawal from something without even drawing a connection between my symptoms and not having it, at least up until this moment, is bizarre. It seems impossible—as if I should instinctively want more of that substance. Like I should see so clearly the source of the problem and be overcome with the need to correct it. But I just feel sick.

My head turns at gunshot speed to the wall. The pipes are death-rattling inside. It's not the clanky sound the plumbing at work. Rather, these deep, yawning creaks growl through the plaster like a metal bridge bending and giving out under the weight of rush-hour traffic. It's unsettling.  


I was in the middle of saying something. I can't remember what.

“Gail told me to take you to St. Peter's. She said you guys have a mutual acquaintance there—that they'll get you seen right away?” 

“Great.” I say, noncommittal—so as to suggest: _have fun on your trip!_ He's doing it again. I may not know what it was that I said a moment ago, but it still deserves to be acknowledged. If he feels I'm so inept that I'm not worth responding to, the least he could do is make some meaningful grunt to signify the end of his interest in what I have to say. After all, aren't I too dumb to understand the conversation has moved on? The big downtalk-retorts are flying fast and free, missing the mark for my lips and coming to blows with my mind instead, where they flare—misdirected—into self-deprecation.

  
My eyes don't well up anymore, though. They just sting, dry and cold with sleep deprivation where the visions of wet if-only's should be.

“So you're just gonna carry on this dance? Drink yourself stupid—lather, rinse, repeat until liver and renal failure?” The light insect-buzzes in strobes, humming on and off for a few seconds of shaky, flip-book pictures of him putting his cigarette to his mouth.

His face hardens at my non-response. Getting up momentum, he stammers on some wordless syllables with his 'frankly-speaking-my-dear' scowl.

“I don't know if it's easier for you to not pay attention to feeling bad or what, but you're fucking yourself over. And I don't get how you can't see that. It's scarier to me than—than anything else, that you don't feel any inclination... _at all_... to get yourself checked out. To get your head checked out, at the absolute least. If I knocked myself unconscious, I'd hope you'd tell me to go to the hospital.”

Sober pain pierces behind my still dry, still cold eyes. I'm staring off into nowhere—straight at and straight through the rust stain on the wall behind him. I can hardly hear him over the ghosts that have taken residence in my head. Over the racket inside the wall. The well-intentioned preaching, my fears, and the looped life reenactments haunting me all flow together in the same whirlpool. It's dragging my nerves down to those unimaginable bottom steps. To rock bottom—the depths of the ocean at the foot of a volcano. And that belt seems to slither up my boot, possessed by a memory. I see bad intentions in it and pull my knees to my chest, accordingly out of reach.

“If Gail got hit the way you just did, what would you say to her? You _slammed_ your head into a pipe, your back's a fucking butcher's scrap-heap, you haven't eaten anything, you've been drinking, you're getting sick all over the place every ten minutes, and you had a shitty night without all that just from Nick's antics. And adding... _that_ —what happened to you—on top of everything? A normal person would want to be home lying down, resting somewhere right now. What are you trying to prove? What are you trying to _do?_ ”

My heartrate's turned into a propeller for the displacing force of anxiety that's both pushing hot adrenaline up to my head and simultaneously making my stomach drop. The noise in the wall bends into a long, tinny scrape. It echoes through my head—nails on a chalkboard. Claws on metal. Like something carnivorous scaling up pipes and fixtures in the walls.

“ _Just leave me alone_ _._ ” I'm not contributing to his conversation anymore, but I don't think he knows it.

“I only want to help you.”

The python squeeze worsens. An image from that night surfaces, like something rancid floating up from the ocean-bottom, buoyant from decay and being eaten away at. I tell myself I don't know anymore if it's being eaten away inside me or if it's trying to chew its way out, but I know better.

When you bury emotions deep, it's not like anchoring a corpse down to be picked to clean bone by bottom-feeders. Psychology isn't like most other sciences; there's nothing hard, nothing physical to pick apart. Emotions don't fit under microscopes. Buried under the mind's tide, there are no scavengers to keep the natural order—to devour useless remains that would otherwise wither. Instead, it's empty space full up with ghosts. Thoughts. Fears. Memories. They taunt and paw at it, but there's no action and no movement. What's been swallowed stays and festers under the pressure to something raw. Something mutilated. Infectious. My fall to rock bottom has knocked it loose, and up, up it goes, like bubbles to the surface.

“And I think that on, some level, you want help. I don't think it's... I don't buy that it was just—just disoriented nonsense when all you were doing when you woke up was asking for Nick. You want him to know—you want him or _someone_ to help you.”

The light surges on and off again. Three times, sharp and angry with hisses to match—the visual equivalent to door-slamming. I feel hate come down at me in rays. The belt crawls closer and I try to stand up, try to freeze-frame the past and cut myself out of the picture before it can happen.

“No.” My head is swimming. My body clashes against both my direction and its own fight-or-flight responses, leaving me with this dizzy inability to stand straight or still. I hear breathing. I feel it on my neck. I nearly trip over my feet spinning to face it. But there's nothing.

Mick's getting up off the floor after me.

“What're you doing? _Sit down_.”

In something like the suggestible, squeamish shiver from phantom thoughts of insects, I turn back around to the door. The room drags in my vision, running upward, slow conveyor-belt style, but it never floats completely away. It's as if what I've thought of as the three-dimensional world has been frames on a film-loop, moving fluidly until now to create that effect. Now the reel is skipping, slowly breaking down, and the illusion is suffering as a result.

The sting in my wrists clinches to barbed wire, sizzling hot for branding. I reach toward the pain and the belt drops from my hand, cracking the buckle in three clean, curved chunks on the floor. The wall carries on louder with its rasping and grating. There's a steamy hiss now from a reptile or a burst pipe. 

I hold my head with my hands plastered at either sides of my face, pulling on my eyes and partially covering my ears. I don't even know when I picked it up. I'm trying to stare ahead to escape all this malfunctioning equipment, but I think it's splitting into both sight and sound now, and either way the wall is moving just like everything else. I'm sweating, as though my cold-blooded interior melts the more my skin heats up. All of it is draining out of me. I'm losing myself.

“ _Where are you going?_ ”

My ears are buzzing—ringing. The belt is at my feet, still in one piece. I think I might've stepped on the syringe. Light flashes in front of my eyes in odd, dotted colors, and it trails and dances everywhere I look. Every part of me is pulsing in numbness—pins and needles all over. The noise is getting louder. I hear, I _feel_ , breathing on my neck, and the humid blow on my skin burns. My throat burns and _burns_ until I can't cope without opening my mouth. Even that just seems to fan the fire.

I reach for the door but something snags my wrist and I can't get away.

“I'm not done talking to you!”

“ _Don't touch me!_ ” There's a sickly suctioning of air that I barely believe is coming from me, and then I'm broken into hyperventilation by the same force: fear. The threat is overwhelming and I'm not able to distance myself from it. Even when the hold seems to cut loose, there's such a jolt striking every cell to stand at attention, I can't contain the shock. My body is leaping from me to an inside-out mess. My knees have given out and there's a sensible rush of blood to my face—a rhythm of cold and warmth, back and forth, on and off. I hit the floor—first kneeling, then flat on my ass. The empty, sloshing burn in my stomach shoots straight through, almost in seasickness, and these sharp pains that have been with me all day are becoming more acute. I'm choking, pouring sweat, and screaming just to hear myself over the ear-splitting hum. “ _Leave me alone!_ Stop! _Stop! Stop it! Stop it!_ ”

“ _Jesus, God almighty—_ I'm sorry!”

“Don't touch me!” Gathering the broken pieces, I scoop the armful of my legs in to my chest. No breathing, no moving, no thinking. I just draw into myself. Drag my hands down over my face—unable to fight off the curling rigor-mortis reflex even just enough to stop my nails digging into my skin. “ _Don't touch me.”_

Everything says: _retreat_. But even immobilized, there's a system of self-preservation I can't shut off. An alarm blaring to a deaf town long after an attack has taken place. Useless and annoying. I'm physically resigned to the floor, but my instincts and emotions continue to rebel in unconscious bursts of adrenaline meant to aid my survival.

“I won't! I didn't mean to... _Fucking..._ I'm sorry.”

Lost breath lashes back at me. My chest heaves and the air comes in loud, all at once. Hyperventilation continues—my teeth chatter, my limbs shake. My body seems to think it's stuck in the arctic tundra, except I'm on fire.

“Sorry. I won't—I won't touch you again. I'm sorry. Please... get up.”

Solid explosions with no accompanying vibrations rapid-fire in front of me. I shrink further into myself, maintaining what little grip I can by taking my face into my hands. I feel sick and heavy. Even with the burn still there in my throat, I can't vent out any of this horror into tears. The depression is dented in place on my brain, and no amount of rapid-breathing will inflate that dent and let me resume normal functioning to fucking cry. The dread is dull and beneath the reach my thoughts, but constant. Spreading over every waking moment until it's scraped so thin, every nerve is raw and agitated, ready to scream, and I can feel myself losing my mind. I should've let go completely at the table when I still could. I should've just gotten this out of system. The opportunity to drain the poison is gone now.

“ _Öffne die Tür!_ ” The bangs continue. There's metallic rattling above me, like the walls but lighter—higher pitched. Closer. Panicked shuffles of feet echo all around until they're right up beside my head.

“Chris, _get up._ ”

“Unlock this _immediately!_ ”

“Okay— _alright!_ Hold on!”

The flashing red and black before my closed eyes tells me the light is still pulsating. There's a click and a fast, swinging squeak. The noise leaps from the walls and storms the room. An avalanche is quaking all around me. I cover my ears. The screams still break through.

“ _Raus!_ ” The command is without hesitation. Clear. It penetrates the looping, nonsensical fear that's drowned everything else out. It's as if it's sounding from inside my head. Not in the sense of the disembodied, abstracted sound of speech that you've thought up yourself. More like a loud-speaker that was surgically spliced into my skull without my knowing. My reaction is immediate and just as direct the voice: I push upright onto my palms and knees. Well before I even focus to see that the door is there and open, I'm taking off through it in a hyperspeed evolutionary-chart progression to my feet.

“He's sick; I'm just trying to— _Chris!_ Where are you going?!”

“ _Out!_ Get out, _now!_ ”

“Look, mate, I can explain; we can talk about this—”

“ _Tunte!_ Get out!”

Screams come from behind me. I don't really sense them growing distant so much as more seismic chatter and commotion roars ahead to replace them. Everything's helter-skelter, rotating and shifting around me and under my feet. The spinning drag in my vision comes with a kick, like I'm on a ship at a particularly violent stretch of sea. I push forward, stumble, fight back to my feet, and stumble again. The appropriate seasickness lurches up from inside my chest again.

  
_you've been with the professors and they've all liked your looks_  
_with great lawyers you have discussed lepers and crooks_  
_you've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books_  
_now you see this one-eyed midget shouting the word "now"_  
_and you say, "for what reason?" and he says, "how?"_  
_and you say, "what does this mean?" and he screams back_  
_"you're a cow; give me some milk, or else go home!"_  
_because something is happening here_  
_but you don't know what it is_  
_do you, Mister Jones?_  


_Nick_

I press the plunger. The collision hits me full-force. I'm off-guard—unprepared and nearly unsuspecting from the long interval. The impact is bigger and better like the familiar smell of the air in your room made noticeable again by a long vacation, or the stink of your clothes revealed by a shower. I can taste, see, smell, hear, feel it all again. My arms hit the floor limp at either of side of me. The window of opportunity to pull the needle out has passed. Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space.

The social unease dissipates as the cumbersome sense of comfort weighs me down to the floor, turning off every muscle group on the way. Everything unclenches, relaxes—becomes buoyant in contrast to the heavy euphoria at my core. I'm disarmed and glad for it.

“It's been nothing but _dreadful_.” Marc explains to Anita with the rolling direction of his eyes. She laughs, short and to the point: let the Dreadful-Life Contest commence. I can hear him crushing and cutting lines of speed for everyone—the razor first like a chef's knife at work on some vegetables, but then crumbling to a cadence of tap-dancers on a gravel-covered stage. He's always selfishly generous this way. Ready and willing to help keep everyone alert to entertain him with conversation. In my case, thankfully, he knows I have to be well sedated first for stimulating me to have any positive effect on the quality of my company. “Deaths, deals, disappearances. When it rains, it pours. If I never have to talk to the police again, I'll know I'm in the deep, subconscious paradise of a coma.”

She's shaken from her high-horseshit problems by this, and she crowds Marc's elbow room to lend the unsaddled sympathetic ear.

“Who died?”

He waves it off. I still hear the echo of Mick's voice to the conversation around me— _This could've been his second concussion, and then he'd be dead_ —but it's dulled now and harder to discern from the silence.

“I don't even want to think about it any more, hon. It's no one you'd know. High interest to the certain others, unfortunately, but nobody to shed tears over. Deserved it, if you ask... _well_ , anyone who knew him.” The woman in red at his side seems to perk right up at this mention, but then again, everything's starting to funhouse-morph under the weight of my eyelids.

Jazz music cuts the tension in the air while he takes his time kneeling at the coffee table centered between the red couches and loveseats. I'm comfy here propped partway against the wall. The rumble of percussion around a peppy piano scale kicks a march of invisible heels from black-and-white-film swing joints all around this fucked up staring contest between me and Alex through the tiles of mirror on the ceiling. My eyes are so heavy. He's winning.

_When you're smiling (when you're smiling)_  
_And the whole world smiles with you (smiles with you)_  


We're both staring at each other in the glass, making eye-contact the same as if we were looking across the room. Somehow, it makes it acceptable—a bit like chain-smoking does for wanting to stand around outside alone for the duration of your break at work.

“Is that the reason for all this security shit?” I've broken the silence before I'm aware that I have anything to say. Feelings are just sort of coming out of my mouth like drool. And now that I think about it, I am drooling, too. I wipe my mouth with the side of my arm. My dribbling hostility is misdirected—pathetically so. Although my eyes never leave Alex, I am still technically responding to Marc. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to have the enthusiasm for partaking in life to notice it, let alone think much of it.

“Basically. That's been another pain in my ass by itself since we lost... _you know who_. We're short-handed; having to short-change two-bit mobsters to break even. I thought I'd have shot myself before this day came.” Now he's responding to me but talking to Alex instead—who, by comparison to the red wall behind him, looks dead and as such unable to participate in the conversation. This is all getting confusing. “If it weren't for Alex.”

Marc clutches the edge of the table to lean giddily backwards and upside down, singing what is evidently over-sung appreciation for Alex with a toothy grin. We break contact for him to roll his eyes and smile back. I gladly take the opportunity to close my eyes.

_And when you're laughing (when you're laughing)_  
_Oh, you're laughing (oh, you're laughing)_  
_Man, the sun comes shining through (shining through)_  


“Thank God he still keeps in touch with his ex- _family_ in Little Italy. I don't think Manny's boys are intimidated by anything else.”

Alex scoffs in a way that I guess is supposed to be a gracious acceptance Marc's flattery, but sounds more like he's been waiting to hear his credentials spoken and finds it ridiculous that complete strangers treat him as anything less than a mafioso emperor. Alex scoffs in a way that I guess is supposed to be a gracious acceptance Marc's flattery, but sounds more like he's been waiting to hear his credentials spoken and finds it ridiculous that complete strangers treat him as anything less than a mafioso emperor. I'm having a hard time imagining why some big-shot mafia guy would be working as a security guard in a gay club. Then again, that question answers itself under closer inspection and consideration of la Cosa Nostra's not quite so warm embracement of homosexuality.

I can't help thinking his surname doesn't really match his first name. Unless his real family is mixed nationalities—or it's his special mob name.

“'Thought you were American.” I kind of mumble at the ceiling, not coming anywhere close to expressing myself.

“It's in New York, Nick.” Anita snarls. I take an educated guess that she's assuming I'm responding to the remark about Little Italy and she finds my lack of common geographic knowledge and sophistication insufferable. I'm not sure why that would be such an awful offense, though. I try to shrug; I can't tell if it works out. It dawns on me that there's a giant mirror above my head, though, so I pry my eyes open and repeat the motion.

When I'm through checking myself, I can see Alex is in the same spot still watching me. The smoldering look he's holding just for me is right where I left it. 

I'm used to pissing people off. Between singing on stage all over different countries and walking around off stage with Chris in the quieter, less populated places we pass through, it's a fact of my life. It comes with the territory. Starting out, it's hard to cope with. Once you've been around the block a few times, though, and gathered the natural mob-following with torches and pitchforks, it gets more unfathomable the more the numbers add up. Somehow, it's easier psychologically if it's a large group that's pissed off at you than it is if it's one individual person. I can handle an entire room hating me. But the same way one individual death close to you can destroy you in ways an entire plane-crash never could, it's a lot harder to be stuck in a room with one familiar person who wants your head on a stick.

_When you're crying (when you're crying)_  
_You bring on the rain (bring on the rain)_  


Sharp, papercut pin-prick pains on my arm seize my attention from the rage-darkened face across from me. I've been scratching—not for phantom itches anymore, but want of something to keep my hands busy with. The scab from where Chris cut my arm with a piece of broken bottle is in shreds under my fingernails. I'm bleeding. Seeing the source of the pain makes my skin crawl, but I can't stop my hands from peeling off the last hanging scraps of it.

My eyes sting. They won't stay open. In the mirror, I catch a heavy, sandy glance of the wall behind Alex. There's curved, mirror paneling circling the room in a stripe. Like wisps of smoke, a stormy cityscape of what could be LA or Chicago, or maybe Seattle fills the space within the glass. The sky is white; no blue, no sun. All clouds. Mist caresses skyscrapers—foggy fingers of some giant specter pet the buildings. We're high up. Slowly rotating in this circular, sterile room lined with dining booths of white tabletops and red and black leather.

I keep loafing sloppy slices from the fish on my plate with the edge of my spoon, but the body never ends. Columns of fish bone and meat that I chop off keep piling off my plate and onto the table, even though the fish doesn't get any shorter. It stares up, lifeless and in perpetual eyelid-less surprise.

The rhythm pulsating from the speakers has broken off from its song structure into an ostentatious solo performance. The lonesome dance progresses like Fred Astaire's feet hopped up on crystal meth, but I can feel the tempo beginning to unwind inside my ear. Anything musical about it decays; the solo becomes a primadonna fit. Pattering chaos.

“You believe this shit? He was supposed to help me clean this up.”

“Extinction.” Roark's hand strays momentarily away from picking under his thumbnail with the knife to gesture at the window—his line of vision following with a disinterest that says he's already seen it. He gives a what're-you-gonna-do shrug. “It happened last time, too. It's the mirrors, you know? They get confused by their reflection.”

I look up from my plate. Thousands of birds are slamming into the windows outside, one after the other, pounding a continuous assault like raindrops.

I palm the fish-gut slathered spoon and open my hand to the empty seating on the other side of my table, certain that this conversation would be easier if he'd sit in front of me. I'm aware that he's also sitting behind me, though, and I don't think it's helping the weather.

“Do you have a sharper knife?”

I hear the twist and pop of an uncorked bottle of wine behind me. I turn around to look. The army of dead birds is open-firing on the window. I know the glass isn't thick enough to hold them off and I feel dread in all of my body like someone drenched me with a bucket of it. I'm aligned in the booth in such a way that my heart and face are immediately in harm's way, and I know I can't move fast enough to dodge them. I've cut too many pieces of the fish. They're in my way, all over the booth, and I think the birds can smell it.

A weight lifts from my eyes. Screams from outside the door snip through the wallpaper of nightlife club noise, cutting my dream short. I struggle with the clunky, malfunctioning network of muscle to keep my eyes open. The drunk patrons who've been shouting to be heard over the music—all thinking their stories are the most important and as such should be told the loudest—have stopped short for whatever has seized center attention. Their reactive, movie cliché silence is playing a game of see-saw with the surrealism of the speakers caroling on with the peppy, happy tune.

A distinctly English, male voice is screaming something. Anita's eyes have grown twice their normal size, like they're accommodating to match her dilated pupils. She looks to the woman, whose sunglasses reveal no emotion. The empty spot where Alex was standing burns in my vision like some terrible, metaphysical question.

Marc's eyes come full circle my way, settling magic eight-ball fixed on me. All the blood seems to have left his face, but he latches on to this contact with me like I'm the buoyant airplane-seat cushion in the middle of the ocean of his problems. I shake my head violently and pull myself to sit upright, trying very hard to stay awake.

“Ever since Mr. Reznikov made it his business to send oaf after oaf harassing me about his friends, I've been losing employees by the day. And _speaking_ of missing employees, where's Chris? _How's_ Chris, you devil?” He has unwittingly turned the floodlights on me. I shift in my seat—the side to side shuffle-run of a spotlighted escapee testing his spotter's reflexes. I feel like my thoughts have been invaded. Chris's name weighs as much as a bunch of broken chain-gang rocks; the grief is sinking as I swallow my tongue and get ready to play dumb.

“ _Put it down!_ ”

“ _I wanna know where he is!_ ” The British accent bellows. The volume's turned up and the picture's coming into focus now. “Where is he, Alex?”

“Put it _the fuck_ down!”

_Stop your sighing (stop your sighing!)_  
_Won't you be happy again? (happy again!)_  


“What?” I manage to get the lone syllable out before I choke. I notice the door is open. The English voice belongs to a shorter, wiry man with an eye-patch and a shotgun poised at arm's length from Alex out in front of the bar.

“The mafia guy?” Anita chimes in with austere, frightened concern—either very fixed on the situation at hand or choosing to ignore the last couple parts about Chris, or both.

“You gonna shoot me, Aleksie?” Alex pushes at the gun, provocatively forcing it off track. The man—Aleksie—re-aligns it on him. Alex does it again. He's walking into the barrel. Aleksie backtracks, stumbling against the restrictions of a long winter coat that goes down to his legs and what has evidently been a night of heavy drinking. Alex slaps the gun away again and struts toward Alexsie some more and then slaps it away again. He seems to think he's playing the lead role in an old western film. “Shoot, then.”

Marc doesn't look like he's heard her. He's still staring at me, as if nothing's going on. I can't concentrate.

I pause. I repeat myself, forgetting in the moment that it's even a repetition.

“What?”

“ _Svoloch!_ Should put you down like the _fucking dago mutt_ you are... _Tell me where he is!_ ”

“Me and my _dago family_. You know how much my father loves russkie foot-soldiers who don't know their place.”

“Your special friend? The one who's left my bar untended for two weeks. He's not fired—unless he's quit. In which case, he's fired.” Marc quips, pretending to be more poor-tempered than he really is. He's now watching his razor very carefully. The woman in red takes a drag off her cigarette, raising a quizzical eyebrow that slips her sunglasses down just enough to expose half her eyes, looking at me. I'm not in a right state of mind, but this seems odd given the more exciting distraction going on out by the bar. Marc continues on with his guilt-plus-humiliation trip method of extortion. As far as I can tell, it's primarily comprised of gesturing with his wrists. “I'm positive you know him, darling. That tree you've settled nest in—the one every gay man in Berlin has been barking up? Myself included? Straight, too, _apparently_ —and thanks for telling me, by the way. You two have got some penchant for keeping in touch. I would've thought Manny got to him if Gail wasn't here to tell me otherwise.”

“The Russian mob guy—Immanuil Reznikov.” Anita repeats herself, no longer asking but instead expressing how riveted and horrified she is by the fact that she's heard of him. The name sounds familiar, I guess. She does a double-take over her shoulder, freshly entertaining the possibility the one-eyed Brit outside could be the Russian mob guy in question.

“ _Mne pohui. Where is Solonik?!_ ”

“ _Va fan Culo! Figlio di una mignotta!_ ”

Marc is struck tense and silent. His face doesn't join in on the mood change, but his body language still screams it out. He smiles, almost like he's trying to hide the fact that he's bothered—which is a polite gesture on anyone else but bizarre on him and in this context.

“We call him Manny here, because we're all very good friends.” He says every word of this staring at the woman, speaking with a purposely false enthusiasm as if he were scripted. She heaves up her cigarette-perched elbow in her hand and blinks several times with hard, purposeful annoyance.

“Shoot already, you stupid cunt.”

Anita and I are picking up on something not being right or comfortable about this relationship. Marc rolls up a dollar and hands it over to her as a gesture of goodwill, edging the plate of speed her way across the table. She looks to me and we have a small, psychic exchange: _What the fuck?_

Aleksie heaves the gun forward, swerving in drunk stumbles just from trying to steadily aim the weapon. Alex grabs the gun by the barrel, twists, and steals it away from him. He cocks and aims it as fast as it's changed hands. There's a commotion. More indistinct shouting. Alex walks steadily forward until they're both out of view. 

_When you're smiling (when you're smiling)_  
_Keep on smiling! (keep on smiling)_  
_And the whole world smiles with you_  


Everyone wordlessly agrees it's best to leave the conversation where it is. It feels like we're shadowing at a cult meeting, watching them prepare the Kool-Aid and pretending like there's nothing off about the huge vat of cyanide next to the water cooler. Marc turns to me—the next in line to wake up and dazzle him with conversation. It's like he doesn't even know or hear what's going on outside.

“What voodoo did you work to turn that boy, anyway, you sly son of a bitch? It's typical, really. Cute, straight bartender works here for all this time, flirting with all the girls and boys for tips, notorious tease that he is—and then _another_ straight boy goes and snags him...”

At first I'm not sure what we're talking about. Then I'm not sure I understand how anything between me and Chris is a typical scenario. I hope that he's being facetious, but either way, I don't want to hear it. I definitely don't need it to be reiterated in his colorful language in front of Anita.

Alex surges back into the room in a stony-faced blur, gun in hand. He sends the door swinging behind him like the two-way kind you see in old western taverns, except rather than going pendulum in-and-out, it cracks against the wall and bounces back to slam shut. With an air of pride, he dismantles the shotgun and drops it on the floor at the woman's feet. 

The sickly snort of air and powder from Anita accepting Marc's gracious gift breaks the silence.

“I really don't want to talk about Chris right now, actually.” I say tentatively, barely going above a whisper. I have to wrench my tongue between my teeth, mouth-closed, to keep from grinding them to dust. Pitting this crude talk against the affectionate, personal significance of the memories I have with him would disgust me on a good day. Even then, this is so bizarre pretending like nothing just happened out by the bar. But I really don't want to say anything rude to Marc.

Be grateful; be polite.

After the long-held face of subdued revulsion with me, Alex is sneering at my mention of Chris even more than I let myself get away with. Even more than at dealing with drunken, gun-wielding, British-Russian thugs. In a yawn of suppressed anger, my jaw strains out and then to the side until I hear my ears click.

Marc looks to Anita, then to me. He rolls up a second bill, making a presumptuous face like he understands—like she's the reason why. It's partly true, because I might be more at ease to talk without her here, but not for the reason he's thinking. I feel like I should say or do something to correct him. I'm at a loss for what. I'm too stoned and too freaked out by whatever he's got going on here to even try.

He hands Alex the dollar instead, purposely slighting me. Alex smiles.

_When you're laughing_  
_You bring on the joy (bring on the joy)_  


“That's... It's... not that.” I weakly motion at Anita and myself. I'm staring Marc down, making sure I see the lightbulb go off. Even if there's a vindictive thrill to it when I consider the possibility of him spreading some rumor that I'm screwing around with Anita behind Chris's back, I'm not going to be the one that gets the reputation for being a backstabbing whore. I clear my throat. My voice goes up, unintentionally pitching my reason as a question: “It's just—not a good time?”

I'm not asking if this is a good excuse so much as whether or not he'll accept the good excuse that clearly exists that I obviously don't want to fucking talk about.

His eyebrows shoot up and his mouth gapes in a humbled _eureka_ moment of understanding. Looking relieved, his head rolls thoughtfully to the side while his eyes scan the mirrored ceiling, looking to his vain version of the heavens to shake his head at the hasty assumption he'd made.

_Be happy! (be happy!)_  
_You've got to groove, my boy (you've got to groove, my boy)_  


Anita smiles. It's a play of embarrassment on my behalf. She's agitated with my brooding silence and needs a polite introduction to the very spiteful, very surreal conversation she's about to start.

“No—he's still smitten with Chris. They're really something together, aren't they?”

Marc shrugs.

“I wouldn't know.” For dramatic effect, he frowns at me as part of his response to her. “Chris never breathed a word about it that I caught wind of; I only heard it through the grapevine earlier this week. Hardly believed it, but at the same time it made sense with how friendly they always were. I guess I'm coming in at the end?”

I pull inward from my temples with my thumb and middle finger, dragging them over my eyes until they meet at the bridge of my nose. I remember how upsetting it was when we first kissed—for real, at least. It happened more than once before at the bar—drunk and trying to get some girls' attentions. Or I guess that's what we told ourselves. It was trashier, more shallow, and worse-tasting, but it didn't bother me then. But when it happened just between us out of attraction, passionate impulse, a genuine sentiment of affection and desire—tongues jumping down throats, hands grabbing and pulling us together, fingers combing and petting—I felt ashamed of myself.

I remember where I am and clear my throat.

“No... He's been sick.” Sick. Mentally ill. We're all being such weird fucking liars right now between pretending that we're the best of friends here to update each other on the personal and romantic goings-on of our lives, and pretending the drunken, cycloptic Englishman didn't just threaten acts of terrorism on the entire bar, what difference does it make? 

“I hope it's not serious—”

“—Serious? I dunno. You'd have to ask him.”

Alex laughs, derisive and shifting his weight impatiently, still in soldier mode. A nice and sturdy foundation is being laid to support my rickety paranoia of him having it out for me as solid perception. He rubs his nose, kneels back from the table, and tosses the used dollar my way.

“It being that he's not here to speak for himself, one would hope you'd have some answer as to whether or not he's seriously ill.”

I pick up the dollar from where it's landed beside my feet. With an overt air of disgust, I toss it back on the table. 

“Don't you have a door to guard?”

_When you're smiling (when you're smiling)_  


“My break started ten minutes ago. Perhaps you should consider putting as much concern as you show for the shift schedules of club security into your sick boyfriend.”

“You have a fucking problem with me?”

_Keep on smiling (keep on smiling)_  


“Should I?” I don't know how, but there's a connotation here that either involves me being a terrorist out to attack Marc, or something about Chris and the truth or falsehood in hearsay actions of mine against him that might come out. Alex's taking it onto himself to play the judge on some gossip testimonies in what's apparently supposed to be my final performance. Marc looks furiously embarrassed with him and yet sworn to silence.

“You've only been staring at me the entire goddamn time I've been here.”

“You've only been drawing attention to yourself whining and pouting the entire time you've been here. I wasn't meant to look?”

_And the whole world_  


“Boys...”

“Private Valentino over here has been making eyes at me since I got through the door, Marc. It's getting uncomfortable.”

_Smiles with you_  


“Your guest is behaving exceptionally agitated, Marc. I suggest you let me frisk him for you now on his way out.”

“ _Boys._ No one is frisking anyone. We can all see you've got chemistry, but show some discipline and contain yourselves. There are _other people_ in this room. You can rent your own together later.”

“ _No_ , this goddamn _asshole_ is _staring at me_. What're you, painting a fucking mental portrait? You want me to pose for you? If you have a problem with me, _fucking say it to my face_ instead of all this weak bullshit about kicking me out.”

“Well, I don't like your face, Dick. That's my problem.”

“Honey, I wish I could intervene on your behalf here but it puts me in a very uncomfortable position to entertain guests that the man who's saving my livelihood doesn't like.”

“I don't like you. I've never liked you. Apart from Marc, no one I know here likes you. I don't see why anyone would like anything about you, let alone hate themselves enough to submit to a committed relationship with you.”

“ _Alex!_ ”

“ _No!_ Fuck that! I don't like the way you and your friend treat my co-workers when you're here—I don't like what I've heard about the way you've been treating my co- _worker_ when you're not here. You're disrespectful. You're rude to my customers. You don't tip worth a fuck. You expect everything for free because you have friends who actually work hard. Every single thing about you is obnoxious and ugly.”

_Oh, 'cause I'm the Sheik_  
_Of Araby (With no turban on!)_  


I feel like I just got punched in the stomach.

My adrenaline-soaked blood plummets from my heart into my gut. I'm honest to God happy for him to keep talking at me. I hope that it doesn't end soon, because if anyone tries to talk _to_ me or engage me in any way expecting a reply, I'm going to start bawling. It's not preventable. It's not arguable. It's what's going to happen. I don't want to. It won't be in reaction to anything being said to me. No one will understand why. It's just going to happen. 

I've lost contact with the stimuli that have kept me on my guard. My defenses are gone because there's no physical ill feeling to defend myself against. In that warm, radiant buzz that seems to vibrate every cell in me like a twenty-five cent Magic Fingers round in my skin, the heaviness that goes along with the high is forced to share space with the burden I've been ignoring. The sugar-coating put up by my ego has fallen over. It's just there now, cumbersome and glaring like some tumor my body's shut off from fighting against or being hurt any further by: I miss Chris.

_Oh, your love belongs to me (With no turban on!)_  
_Ah, at night when you're asleep (With no turban on!)_  
_Baby, into your tent I'll creep (With no turban on!)_  


The music drills into my brain and I smell him, see him smiling, feel his arms around me, hear him talking. The rubble of memories avalanches down and I'm trying to swallow that throatful of gravel.

“Not to mention, you act like a homophobic _jackass_ every time I see you and your little marching band, and now you're fucking the nicest guy who works here and complaining about it to his boss. I don't know why Marc entertains your company, but if it weren't for him and Chris, I'd have seen to it that you don't have a foot to set in this bar a long time ago.”

“I'm sorry. Maybe it'd be best if you two left. I really apologize, Anita. He's just been on edge with all of... _this_ going on.”

_And the stars that shine above (Jumpin' as a jay bird)_  
_Will light our way to love (Jumpin' as a jay bird)_  


I can't hear what Alex's saying anymore. I feel a deep-rooted discomfort from being somehow inadequate or ill-equipped socially. That thing that's lacking inside has mated with that thing that shouldn't be there, and it's turned the gaps and foreign pieces outward on my skin for everybody to see. I'm betrayed by my own nervousness, feeling the heaviness thicken in my chest while I wait to be found out and pounced on by the voracious, sharp-tongued predators surrounding me. It weighs heavier the stronger the instinct to respond grows.

“He was doing perfectly fine, and then you come along and he disappears for weeks—probably trying to get you to quit shooting shit up your veins. And then you've got the balls to show up here, of all places, looking for a handout. You and that other fucking gangly _mate_ of yours.”

The woman in red laughs. Marc and Alex both fall silent.

“You'll have to excuse him.” She speaks with a thick Russian accent. Her foot kicks up and she bends down to snuff out her cigarette on the bottom of her red high-heel. “Sons of mob bosses—always such crass, spoiled brats. No respect for other authority apart from daddy; not even the one signing paychecks. May I offer you ride home?”

My thoughts play out into words, preparatorily ordering themselves in such a way that they're ready to leap out and parachute to social impress—forcing me to make the arrangements for them to be spoken, like the pilot with a gun to his head. Even so, I'm locked into silence. Suspended in this dread of what I'm about to say, unable to make the decision to say it or not.

Taking my silence as a waiver of responsibility, Anita jumps to her feet. She makes the friendliest uncomfortable eye-contact possible with this woman after essentially being kicked out, pulls up one of the zippers on the back of her boot that came down at some point during the commotion of the evening, and smiles big and wide.

“We'd love a ride home.”

_And you'll rule this crazy land with me_  
_I'm the Sheik-y man_  
_That's who I be!_  



	10. Note to Readers

Hi, Thirty readers!

I have good news and bad news.

The bad news is, I don't have a chapter update for you (very sorry to post this note in the form of a chapter update, but there's no other way for me to contact you guys) and... I probably won't be finishing this story. At least not at this time. 

But! The good news is, I've been working on another original fiction story loosely based on this fic. Some of the same characters make appearances or have major roles, a few with name changes. If you're at all a fan of my writing and miss reading Thirty updates, this new story is my baby—I'm in this one for the long haul and hoping to make it into a book series. I would love it if you gave it a shot if it so strikes your fancy. For now, I just have a partial chapter posted, but I have a couple hundred pages written of this story and will be making regular posts and updates as I move along in the editing process. http://archiveofourown.org/works/6984010/chapters/15914071

Thanks for all your comments and love! The best part of writing this was hearing from you guys and knowing I had people who cared about the story reading along. I hope you can maybe fall for the story that's got my heart and mind in its grips right now, too.

Sincerely,  
Bethany


End file.
